CinemaCon 2024 had more than just great trailers

Few weeks of any year are bigger or more important to the film industry than CinemaCon. The annual gathering gives studios, theater owners and exhibition-oriented technology companies a chance to showcase the most exciting developments in the film industry. But while the innovations that debut at CinemaCon can have important implications for the theaters where viewers get their movie fix, the biggest news from the convention almost always comes from the onstage presentations, where studios show off their biggest games.

2024's CinemaCon was no different, but with more than a hundred titles either shown or mentioned during the event, it can be difficult for the average movie fan to keep up with all the news — especially since most of the trailers and clips previewed at the conference aren't released to the public . So to help you keep track of all the most promising things from the convention, Polygon has put together a list of what we learned from attending CinemaCon 2024.

The demise of animated films has been greatly exaggerated, as the CinemaCon 2024 lineup shows. Almost every studio was involved in the animated action. Disney and Pixar have huge sequels in the works, including Moana 2, Inside Out 2 and a prequel to The Lion King. Paramount has the first Transformers animated film in nearly 40 years. And Universal is releasing a new Despicable Me movie and an astonishing adaptation of the children's book The Wild Robot. Perhaps the most surprising addition to this crop is the Warner Bros. entry: Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim, which wasn't previewed at CinemaCon, but was presented to exhibitors as "anime" during the studio's stage show.