Will Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Supervillain Movie Be Rated R? “F— Yes!”

Some of the faux Roman statues at Caesar’s Palace have a different look this week: they’ve been  reworked to hold Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles skateboards. Why? Blame CinemaCon 2023, the annual pep rally run by the National Association of Theater Owners. Thousands of film exhibitors have gathered in Las Vegas this week to reassure themselves that streaming hasn’t put them out of a job just yet, and to take a look at what’s new from the major Hollywood studios. (Including a new entry in the Ninja Turtles franchise, out this August.)

Monday night’s opening ceremonies saw CinemaCon managing director Mitch Neuhauser enthusiastically refer to motion pictures as “product” no less than four times, before ceding the floor to Sony Pictures Entertainment. Of the great many films that were teased, the most exciting came at the very end, when Sony’s Chairman and CEO teed up Sir Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. That film is actually an Apple Original Films production, but the studio chief assured the exhibitors that it will have a significant, dedicated theatrical window via Sony at Thanksgiving. Though Napoleon is not to be confused with the long-gestating HBO series Steven Spielberg has been working on based off Stanley Kubrick’s unrealized Napoleon project, the clip shown at CinemaCon (a brutal battle sequence) included images that were very reminiscent of the late director’s Barry Lyndon. 

Long lenses and rigid battle lines were met with a hazy blue sheen as Joaquin Phoenix played history’s most famous Corsican military commander. (We mostly see him staring off at the battlefield and ordering cannons to fire.) The clip was intense, and got the crowd fairly pumped.

The title that got the second-biggest pop was, perhaps surprisingly, Gran Turismo, a “based on a true story” tale about a gaming whiz turned actual race car driver. (To put this in Gen X terms: it’s like The Last Starfighter, but real.) Actors David Harbour and Orlando Bloom were both present to introduce a trailer of the Neill Blomkamp picture which came across as extremely entertaining (due, perhaps, to low expectations). The film is out August 11. 

The other project to get people applauding was Kraven the Hunter, a comic book property in the greater Spider-Man (and therefore greater Marvel) universe. Aaron Taylor-Johnson introduced a quick sizzle reel with a taped message, telling theater owners “fuck yes, it’s going to be rated R.” 

And the footage bore this out. The extremely muscular British actor (who joked that his contract only allows two grams of carbs per day) sliced open jugular veins, chewed off a guy’s nose, and wore a fur vest. In certain shots, it felt like director J.C. Chandor was framing him an awful lot like Hugh Jackman in his early Wolverine roles. Also in the picture are Russell Crowe (we see him over a dead water buffalo, looking sullen) and Ariana DeBose, who didn’t get to say or do much, but at least got a nice close-up. For the comic book enthusiasts: the Rhino (a villain with the powers of a rhinoceros) will be in the picture. Who plays him, for now, remains a mystery. The movie is out in October. 

Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell also graced Caesar’s Coliseum stage, zinging one another and declaring that they wrapped their romantic comedy Anyone But You “just a few hours ago” in Sydney, Australia. The footage shown was too brief to really discern a plot, but one thing is certain: these two beautiful people spend much of this movie in various states of undress. Film is a visual medium, and this production took full advantage of the assets made available to this production. Audience reaction was a little muted, but it could have been because everyone had their jaws dropped to the floor.

Other highlights: Jennifer Lawrence gave a warm hello with director Gene Stupnitsky for the raunchy comedy No Hard Feelings, and a short scene from early in the film (which is teased in the trailer) played very well. Paul Dano and director Craig Gillespie introduced an early sequence from the upcoming Dumb Money, a The Big Short-esque picture about how a Reddit user turned the stock market upside-down, and Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, and Issa Rae made some very rehearsed-sounding remarks about the upcoming animated picture Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse. Other upcoming Sony projects, like Insidious: The Red Door and The Machine, were met with a shrug.

Finally, Antoine Fuqua gave Denzel Washington a Lifetime Achievement Award, and the two-time Academy Award-winner said a few nice things to the theater owners (“What we do means nothing without your houses. I thank you from the bottom of my heart”) before glibly reading from the teleprompter “it says ‘ad-lib’ so ‘ad-lib, ad-lib’” and introducing Dakota Fanning and the trailer for The Equalizer 3—a project that seems unlikely to get Washington a third Oscar. Tuesday will bring a similar panel for Warner Bros, which will debut its upcoming slate—and give a first glimpse at The Flash, a tentpole that may already have been overshadowed by behind-the-scenes drama.