David Reads The Trades

David Reads The Trades: April 17, 2026

Toplines

  • The Mummy (dir. Lee Cronin) opened with $1.5 million in Thursday previews, projecting a low-teens opening weekend against a reported $22 million budget.
  • Disney unveiled “Infinity Vision,” a new premium theater certification program, with 75 screens already certified domestically and 300 abroad, designed to rival IMAX and Dolby branding.
  • Dune 3 and Avengers: Doomsday remain set to open on the same December date; Sony’s Jumanji 3 moved from December 11 to Christmas Day.
  • Amazon MGM announced a live-action Ferngully with Marielle Heller directing — curiously omitted from their CinemaCon presentation days earlier.
  • Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters took pay cuts, dropping from the low-$60 million range annually; Netflix stock fell ~10% post-quarterly but remains near its pre-earnings baseline around $97.
  • Disney’s Hexed officially announced its voice cast — Hailee Steinfeld and Rashida Jones — though the casting reportedly happened roughly a year ago.
  • Law & Order: Organized Crime was canceled after four or five seasons.
  • Disney stock rose nearly 2% to $105.78 amid a broader market rally tied to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Back from CinemaCon

It’s Friday, April 17th, and I’m back in Los Angeles after being at CinemaCon all week. I’m going to do a separate CinemaCon wrap-up piece later today, because getting back to just doing David Reads the Trades seems like the right move. I’m still organizing my thoughts about CinemaCon — I haven’t really spoken at all about the Disney presentation, which went pretty well, and I have other things to say about other things. So let’s just get to the news.

The Mummy and the Weekend Box Office

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy unwrapped $1.5 million in Thursday previews. That generally means low teens is what the projection usually is. Whether that actually holds true is a real question — it’s not a sure bet anymore what happens with these preview-to-opening multipliers. But it gives you some sense of things. They’re saying the horror pick is eyeing an opening around $12 million on an alleged $22 million cost. So that’s about what a million and a half in previews looks like. Moving along.

Ferngully Lives Again, For Some Reason

A day or two after Amazon MGM was at CinemaCon, for some reason they’re announcing now that Ferngully is returning as a live-action film with Marielle Heller directing. How does that get lost in the process of going to CinemaCon and not mentioning it? They weren’t shy about mentioning future movies at all, and yet somehow Ferngully slipped through the cracks. It couldn’t be that the deal just got done last night. So I wonder what that’s all about.

I’m not a big fan of Ferngully. Some people love it. I was never a fan. But apparently it’s getting made into a movie. Finally, after all these years, another old thing being resurrected. A lot of old things being resurrected lately.

The Non-News Cycle

Scrolling through the trades today, the other thing about the news is there’s no news. For instance, here’s a classic non-news story: Catherine Newton returns to the MCU with Avengers: Doomsday as Cassie Lang following Quantumania. Apparently Catherine Newton said online that she’s in Doomsday. Not a news story. The movie’s long been shot. It’s old news, but I guess she wanted some attention, so she got some attention.

Apparently the people who do Hot Ones, the interview show where people eat hot wings, are now going to do Slice Joint with somebody named Speedy Morman — not spelled like Mormon the religion, M-O-R-M-A-N. I guess this guy is so great he needs to eat pizza with his celebrities. So there you go. He’s going to eat pizza with celebrities.

That’s pretty much all the news on the front pages today. Almost everything on the film side is about CinemaCon, so there’s not actually a lot of new information that isn’t old information. I didn’t mention I, Rocky in terms of Amazon when I talked about it the other day — that thing’s going to be not only a hit, but it could be an Oscar movie, almost certainly likely an Oscar movie. And oh, the irony that the lovely director who makes these very silly films is going to make his second drama as an Oscar nominee.

And here’s another weird one: “Disney Animation’s Hexed Finds Its Cast — Hailee Steinfeld and Rashida Jones.” I’m pretty sure they found this cast a year ago. They have animation with their voices coming out of it. But somehow the news is out now, so there’s that. I don’t think they “found” their cast — I think they’ve had their cast for quite a while.

Disney’s Infinity Vision

The one thing that happened outside of CinemaCon proper that I think is worth talking about here instead of just in the CinemaCon piece is Infinity Vision, which Disney has announced. Their idea is to offer the premium experience at theaters that are not IMAXs around the country. The question a lot of people are asking in a lot of different ways is: what the hell is this going to be, why are they doing it, and what are they really after?

Basically, they’re saying it’s a standard of projection and sound that they will start certifying at theaters around the country, giving a thumbs-up to screens that are Infinity Vision-approved at a certain quality level. They’ve already got 75 certified as premium screens domestically with 300 abroad, so they’ve gotten a head start before the CinemaCon announcement.

Generally, there’s a lot of suspicion out there about what they’re trying to do. I personally think they are getting around the problem they’ve had with IMAX, which is that IMAX makes commitments to other movies, and then Disney has to either fight for position or figure out a way to make up for the fact they don’t have certain screens.

For instance, this last year, the argument between Zootopia 2 and Wicked 2 — they were separated by a week, so they had an advantage there. But basically Zootopia 2 got some IMAX screens but not all the IMAX screens, and they kind of split with Wicked. The year before, it was a fight with the original Wicked. For next Thanksgiving, they’re going to get aced out of IMAX screens because Narnia is getting IMAX screens the weekend before and after Thanksgiving. So their animated movie Hexed is going to get squeezed.

And of course, right now the big conversation has been about Dune 3 and Avengers opening on the same date in December. Sony’s Jumanji 3 moved to Christmas Day from the 11th, so the 11th in theory has opened space for some IMAX screens, but Disney has basically said no, they’re going to stick with the same date and create this Infinity Vision branding to give people the impression that when they go to a screen with this imprimatur of quality from Disney, it will be as good as — or maybe even better than — the IMAX or Dolby screens.

IMAX is not exclusive to AMC but dominated by AMC in America. Dolby is exclusive to AMC in America, though apparently that won’t always be so. A lot of the major exhibitors have non-Dolby, non-IMAX, high-quality premium screens — some with their own branding, some without special branding. They’re in that business. They just don’t have those name brands that people look to.

I keep comparing Infinity Vision to THX. It sounds like it’s kind of THX. The question is, of course, THX charged for it, and the brand gave value to theaters. Will Disney be greedy? Will Disney try to turn this into money? Some people actually think Disney’s going to try to use this as leverage to get IMAX screens. All those things are possible. I don’t want to poo-poo everybody’s paranoid ideas about what Disney’s going to do with this. I think it’s kind of a basic marketing tool that theoretically could be good for exhibitors. So until I am told otherwise by an exhibitor, I’m going to stick with my position. But it’s possible I’m wrong. It could be something else.

Netflix Quarterlies and the Stock Market

Also in news that happened while we were away: Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters took a pay cut at Netflix. Oh, those poor souls — I don’t know how they’re going to survive. They were each making low sixties, millions of dollars a year. They were making over a million dollars a week, like a million and a quarter a week. Ted got a little bit more than Greg — sibling rivalry and all that. And now they’re just going to make just over a million dollars a week. How can they both survive this? It is shocking. Shocking, I tell you, that such pain is happening.

They had their quarterlies at Netflix yesterday, which were so uninteresting that I didn’t bother to really talk about them. And even today, not really much to discuss.

What is interesting is the stock market situation. Netflix is up today, so there is that. But if you look at the chart, Netflix has been operating in a range — they took a dip with their low point really down in February. Then it raised up to the high 90s, around 96, which was the previous high point. Just before the quarterly came out, the stock went from the mid-90s range to 100, topping out at about $107 a share. And then when the information came out and their projections weren’t quite what people were hoping — they missed a little bit on their estimates — it came crashing down.

That’s the story. I think everybody’s running this story about Netflix losing a fortune, but the truth is they’re at $97.08 today, still a couple more hours in the stock exchange, and $97.08 is actually higher than they’d been — except for this peak right before the quarterly — for a month or so. They’d been floating around the same number. Basically, there was a spike when they were about to announce their quarterly, which happens almost every quarter with them, and then instead of the spike continuing up or staying even, they dropped. However, it’s really nonsensical because where they’ve fallen to is pretty much where they’ve been, and actually a little bit higher, because they’ve been down in the 94 and 85 range. Now they’re at $97. It’s a non-event situation. The quarterly is a non-event. Not shocking at all.

The broader stock market has gone crazy today because the Strait of Hormuz is theoretically open. Iran announced they opened the Strait of Hormuz. Who’s in control of the Strait of Hormuz? Who let the dogs out? I don’t know. But apparently everybody’s happy. Dow Jones up 910 points, NASDAQ up $325, S&P 500 up $82. In the film business, the only one technically down is Netflix, which as I said is at about $97.11 a share — down almost 10%. However, it doesn’t take them below where they were before the little pre-hype of the quarterly. It was a bunch of people speculating on the quarterly, thinking it was going to go up, and it didn’t. But what it’s come down to is where it was before the hype moment started. So it’s kind of a bullshit story when people are saying “oh my God, Netflix is taking a big hit.” Netflix didn’t take a growth moment, but it did not really take a big hit. It just took a big hit versus speculation right before the quarterly, which happens every quarter.

Disney, by the way, is up almost 2%, at $105.78 at the moment, which is getting back to close to where they should be. The easing on the oil pressure — the cost of oil, the cost of gasoline — I think is significant in Disney’s numbers. Everybody else is just up pennies and dimes and nickels, maybe a quarter here and there. So even though the stock market is wildly up, Netflix is down, but it’s a false kind of down. The people who are turning it into a thing, which of course our media loves to do, are kind of full of crap today.

James Hibbert’s Winners and Losers: A Critique

There’s a James Hibbert piece at the Hollywood Reporter — “Hollywood Winners and Losers, CinemaCon Edition” — which means Vegas winners and losers. It’s a really weird piece because a lot of it has nothing to do with the event.

“Lost: DC Studios presentation.” Any news out of CinemaCon about The Batman Part Two? How about the Superman sequel? That’s called going to CinemaCon expecting something, not getting it, and then blaming the studio. Not smart.

“Won: Marvel’s presentation.” Marvel’s presentation was all “oh, you want your biggest characters back? Here’s every single one of them.” Yeah, that’s what the movie is. And the movie’s opening this year. Unlike the next Superman movie. Unlike the next Batman movie. They’re opening this year. They’re promoting for this year. That’s what you do at CinemaCon. It’s not that complicated. And yet somehow they’re the winners and DC is the loser. I think you kind of have to want to find a winner and loser to make that happen.

Then: “Star Wars.” “It’s weird that Disney presented the first 20 minutes of the first Star Wars movie in seven years, and yet Mandalorian and Grogu were almost forgotten once the Avengers trailer played.” By whom, James? Tell me, James. Who forgot The Mandalorian and Grogu? I don’t get it. It’s like — have two ideas in your head at once. I know it’s possible.

“Won: Epic prestige trailers. Attendees were stunned by the first seven minutes of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part 3.” The media behaved as though they were stunned. There was nothing stunning. I mean, the Dune movies are beautiful. Denis is a great director. They’re great looking. They have great music. They have great everything. They’re terrific. I’m not saying anything bad about Dune 3 at all. But the media has this thing where it just talks to itself and then says “this is what everybody thinks.” The Dune footage was nice, but it wasn’t overwhelming or shocking or very different than what we’ve seen in the other two Dune movies. It was good.

Same thing with The Odyssey, by the way. Terrific, good to see it. It was actually less than some things we’d seen before — the package they put on IMAX four or five months ago had more footage of the sections they showed. This one had footage of the horse being taken into Troy and some other footage that was different. But it wasn’t even clear whether Christopher Nolan has cut the movie differently or whether it’s just how they cut the materials they show. It was great. It’s terrific. We’re all in love with Dune 3 and The Odyssey. But it wasn’t “oh my God, shocking.”

And then this thing with The Social Reckoning — a bunch of nerdy 50-somethings or 40-somethings talking about Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, basically playing him like he’s mentally ill. I’m sure it’s a lovely performance and a good piece of work. However, this obsession of these guys who are, I guess, too similar to Mark Zuckerberg, more interested in Zuckerberg than the real world is — it’s weird. The obsessions of the media at this event are not the obsessions of the exhibitors I’ve spoken to, the people who were just there for the trade show doing their thing. The things they were interested in were not necessarily the same things.

And of course, they’re not necessarily things I’m interested in either. There was a standing ovation for Snoop Dogg at the beginning of one of the events. There was a standing ovation for Jon Batiste at another. What does this have to do with movies? For me, that wasn’t the thing. But I understand people getting up on their feet and getting excited — that’s the hype machine.

Then there’s the complaining about Tom Holland showing up by hologram. Meanwhile, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Jason Momoa, Johnny Depp, and David Ellison all showed up in person, and that apparently made the Hollywood Reporter so much happier.

“Lost: Lionsgate” — because they weren’t doing a thing. By not being there, they lost, apparently. Likewise, and maybe the weirdest: “Lost: Alamo Drafthouse and AMC moviegoers,” because they’re talking about things happening at Alamo Drafthouse, which Sony technically owns at this point, or at least a chunk of it. But somehow the issue of whether people are now ordering by phone instead of by paper at the Drafthouse got brought up in a CinemaCon piece when it had nothing to do with CinemaCon. I don’t understand that.

And then the pièce de résistance: “In non-CinemaCon news,” he says — non-CinemaCon news — the LuxeMax influencer Cavicular managed to unite the internet in mocking his doe-eyed meltdown and interview walk-off. I still don’t know who Cavicular is. I don’t give a shit who Cavicular is. It is non-CinemaCon news. Why is it being brought up in the Hollywood Reporter as a winner or loser at CinemaCon? I don’t understand it. I mean, I do understand it, but it’s too dumb for me to understand. I’m not saying the writer is dumb. I’m just saying it’s kind of loosey-goosey. This reads more like an influencer piece than a journalistic piece. I guess that’s a nice way of saying it, isn’t it? Thank you, David, for being nice.

The Rest of the Trade News (Or Lack Thereof)

Looking at the TV section for anything that looks like news: they canceled Law & Order: Organized Crime — wasn’t a really good show anyway, in my opinion. Casting, casting, casting. Somebody’s trying to get a spinoff show for The Pit — a different shift, but the same idea, I guess.

Meanwhile, just after David Ellison showed up in Vegas for CinemaCon, he flew quickly to New York for the upfronts for Paramount+, where they talked a lot about foreign female drones, which is not really a surprise — that is a hot topic at the moment.

Over at Variety, their top story is goodbye Stabler — the end of Law & Order: Organized Crime going away after four or five seasons. Then there’s a story about D4VD being arrested for murder. No idea who any of them are, so I’m just not going to comment. More about CinemaCon, more about Ferngully — mostly there’s really no news.

The Hollywood Reporter’s lead story is D4VD being arrested for the murder of a teen in Los Angeles. There’s another analysis of Netflix stock. There’s a quotation from the CNBC Changemakers event in Manhattan on Thursday where Sandra Bullock and Pamela Adlon talked and didn’t say much of anything, even though they want to make it a story. And again, the CinemaCon piece about Robert Downey Jr. showing up and showing the trailer from Avengers: Doomsday, which they showed twice. Oh my God, they showed it twice. Not the first time that’s happened. But the media is mostly there for the first time — most of the media that’s there has not been there as long as five years, much less 32 years. I’ve been going to CinemaCon slash ShoWest for a very long time.

By the way, they use this thing a lot, repeatedly, about so-and-so showing up at CinemaCon “for the first time” because it used to be called ShoWest. So they’ve been there before, but not in eight years or ten years or whatever it’s been since it was ShoWest. Just one of those little PR things. Not really that interesting and not worth lying about, and yet somehow here we are.

Meanwhile, online personalities and comedians are taking over TV and newspapers as the primary news source. And what could make you more sick to your stomach than that? Speaking as an online personality, a poll conducted for the Jordan Center of Journalism, Innovation, and Advocacy at the University of Mississippi shows how the media landscape has fractured. Ooh, it’s fractured. Yeah — people are getting dumber by listening to dumber people.

There’s a movie called Ricky that was at Sundance that is self-distributing. They’re going to explain why in the story, but the answer is nobody bought the movie. That’s why they’re self-distributing. Not really a complicated one.

Over at IndieWire, the top story is about The Pit finale being open to interpretation. I’m not going to look at that at all because I don’t want to ruin it — I haven’t seen it yet. A couple more interviews, and no news. No news is no news.

CinemaCon: The Quick Take

This was relatively brief today. I guess the world just stopped and was busy trying to be excited by Tom Cruise as Digger. That was one of the highlights of the event for me. There were a lot of highlights. In terms of the big movies, CinemaCon went rather well. In terms of the issues, everybody kind of went into a coma and gave up a little bit. I will talk about that when I do the CinemaCon wrap-up piece, which I assume will be later today or tomorrow — I’m a little exhausted, trying to get myself paced.

It was a positive CinemaCon for the most part, though it leaves me continually worried because we still have two issues on the table. The first is the merger, which I still believe is going to happen, most likely. I don’t think there’s much chance of it actually stopping, but there are people who really, really want it to stop.

The second is the issue of windows, which continues even though it wasn’t much of a conversation. It was brought up by each of the studios because they were so proud of themselves for having a 45-day window. But the window that actually matters — now that the particular horror show of the 17-day PVOD window is over, we hope — is the SVOD window. Even David Ellison was up there proclaiming a 45-day window and also proclaiming the 90-day SVOD window, which is the paid streamers — in his case Paramount+ — which is way too short. Still too short. If your SVOD window is only 90 days, the fact that you gave up to 45 days on the PVOD window ain’t doing the heavy lifting. The SVOD window is much more important than the PVOD window. But pretty much everybody except a couple of people gave up on really talking about it because they’re happy with the status quo. For a lot of places, it’s four months. Three months is not unusual at all. There are people doing it at two months, which really has to stop immediately. It really needs to be at least four months and probably should be five months. But I will discuss that at some other time.

What to Watch This Weekend

You should go to the movies this weekend. I’m going to the movies this weekend. Why don’t you go to the movies this weekend? For one thing, if you haven’t seen Project Hail Mary on an IMAX screen, it’s back this weekend — or maybe the next week, so check that out. I have friends who were out of the country when the movie came out. Even though we bought tickets together to go see it opening weekend — actually the weekend before opening — they were out of town, so we’re hoping to go see it with them this weekend. I’m also planning on seeing The Mummy, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. Haven’t seen it yet. And maybe I’ll go see a third movie this weekend. Who knows? I love movies.

I have TV to catch up on also. I haven’t seen the finale of The Pit. But I am heavily recommending, if you’re in your house, get your Apple TV+ and watch Margot Has Money Troubles. It’s apparently only the first three episodes so far, but it’s still a good watch. It’s weird — when I watched it, I liked it a lot, and it’s actually grown in my esteem over time. I can’t say exactly why. I think it’s because each of the actors in it are at the height of their game. It’s a really interesting, complex, weird show, which ultimately comes back to normal, deep family love and emotions and feelings and fear and the looking for love and trying to survive in this crazy world. In some ways, it is a strange classic already in the making. It’s been over a month since I watched it, and it still sticks with me. It’s one of my favorite things this year. Check it out on Apple TV+.

I also want to watch Beef, which is now on Netflix. There are a bunch of things around. When you go away for four days, the world keeps on going, whether you like it or not.

Thanks for your attention. I’ll be back on Monday with David Reads the Trades, and I’ll have the CinemaCon wrap-up piece — I did almost say “Comic-Con,” didn’t I? — up either today or tomorrow, where I’ll try to bring together everything that happened at the show. That’ll be up this weekend. I’ll see you soon. Sooner than you want, damn it. Have yourself a good one.