Buoyant box office The mood at the annual CineEurope trade convention in Barcelona is always coloured by box-office fortunes experienced in Q1 a
Buoyant box office
The mood at the annual CineEurope trade convention in Barcelona is always coloured by box-office fortunes experienced in Q1 and Q2 that year, which means that the vibe was buoyant for the 2026 edition. “What a difference a year makes,” began Sony’s president of international marketing and distribution Steven O’Dell at the studio’s slate presentation, before enumerating box-office successes from a range of US studios. “Different genres. Different audiences. Different paths to success. But they all point to the same conclusion: audience passion matters.”
Lucy Jones, executive director at data gatherer Rentrak (formerly Comscore), presented slides for 2026 box office in key markets, showing the UK and Ireland 12% up on 2025 for the first 23 play weeks, and North America up by 14%.
Continental European markets are even stronger, buoyed not just by powerful US product but also powerful local hits. France showed a 22% rise in admissions on 2025 for the period measured by Rentrak, while in Germany and Italy box office was up by 28% and 45%, respectively.
Buzz words
On day one of the convention, it quickly became evident what the buzz words would be for this year’s CineEurope: fandom, Generation Z, AI, YouTube, Obsession and Backrooms. Fandom, in particular, emerged as a resonant theme, with studio executives leaning into the concept in their introductions to the slate presentations in the main auditorium of Barcelona’s CCIB convention centre.
“Sony is betting on community and fanship,” said Sony’s O’Dell, while Niels Swinkels, EVP and managing director of Universal Pictures International (which released Obsession in international markets), said: “Universal meets audience demands with innovation. Among the many types of films we release, our strategy also includes focusing on changing consumer behaviours, tapping into the power of strong fandom.”
Two studios at CineEurope articulated different conceptions of leaning into fandom. Angel Studios’ Jared Geesey, executive VP of international, spoke at his company’s slate presentation about the Angel Guild of customers, which has 2.4 million members and helps guide greenlight decisions. But StudioCanal CEO Anna Marsh, speaking on the executive roundtable on the first day of the convention, offered a more nuanced view of how you listen to audiences.
“It’s not necessarily about asking the audience what they want,” she said. “They don’t know what they want – but when they see it, then they know they want it. And so it’s pushing the creative boundaries to make sure that we’re telling stories that will create that habit of coming back and being surprised and being wowed.”
Animation
It’s a perennial plea from cinema operators: give us more family films, and especially family animation. Families are always looking for reasons to go to the cinema, and demand tends to outstrip supply.
This year at CineEurope, animation was front and centre in the studio slate presentations, especially in the sessions delivered by Warner Bros, Paramount and Disney (major spotlights on Hexed and Gatto).
Universal showed an exclusive trailer for its 2027 Illumination release Not Alone, trumpeted Shrek 5 for 2027, and showed full feature Forgotten Island (in a non-final version). Laika was also on hand to show 20 minutes of its next feature Wildwood, adapted from the 2011 children’s fantasy novel.
Biblical tales, video games and gloomy female stories – this season’s popular themes
Hollywood has been trying to adapt video games into films for decades, but early missteps (such as 1993’s Super Mario Bros) slowed the pace, and in general hits have been amply balanced by misses. But it seems that recent video-game movie blockbusters both animated (Illumination’s two Super Mario films) and live action (A Minecraft Movie) are providing fresh encouragement.
Paramount has Street Fighter this October, and the Peter Berg-directed Call Of Duty to follow. Sony has Wes Ball’s The Legend Of Zelda next May, followed by PlayStation game adaptation Bloodborne. Sony also has a fresh Resident Evil, rebooting the video-game-originated film franchise, with Zach Cregger directing his first film since Weapons. Warner Bros has A Minecraft Movie Squared.
Biblical stories have risen and fallen on the large screen over the years, and now they are rising again – perhaps thanks to recent biblical hits from Angel Studios (including 2025 animation David), plus success in North American cinemas for The Chosen franchise.
Amazon MGM Studios has more of Dallas Jenkins’ The Chosen in the pipeline: The Chosen: Crucifixion next March, with The Chosen: Resurrection to follow a year later.
Lionsgate likewise has a two-parter: Mel Gibson’s belated sequel to 2004’s The Passion Of The Christ. The Resurrection Of The Christ will come in two parts, landing in cinemas on Ascension Day in 2027 and 2028.
Angel has further biblical tales in the offing, including Zero AD which will depict events around the birth of Christ.
Several gloomy female-driven stories are coming our way too. They include Amazon MGM Studios’ Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity, Lionsgate sequel The Housemaid’s Secret and Paramount thriller A Place In Hell starring Michelle Williams and Daisy Edgar-Jones as criminal lawyers locked into an escalating conflict.
Opening sequences
Nothing succeeds in selling a film to the assembled cinema operators at CineEurope better than the feature itself. Upcoming releases are rarely completed in time, and in any case there isn’t enough time in the event’s packed four-day schedule, but studios can build buzz by dropping a lengthy sequence, and several chose to do exactly that this year.
Lionsgate got the ball rolling by showing the opening 20 minutes of The Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping, which depicts events 24 years before the first Hunger Games film. The sequence generated plenty of buzz, and Lionsgate has every chance of delivering a substantially bigger hit than it did with 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes, which strayed quite far from the franchise’s original DNA.
Sony showed the first 18 minutes of both Resident Evil and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Support from cinemas for the latter film is a given, but less so in the case of Resident Evil, which is the eighth film adapted from the Capcom video-game series. Based on what delegates saw, Cregger’s take on Resident Evil, which stars Weapons actor Austin Abrams as a medical courier, looks set to reach cinemagoers who never previously had any interest in the franchise.
Warner Bros showed the first seven propulsive, intense minutes of Dune: Part III, and the opening sequence of animation The Cat In The Hat. Studiocanal showed the first couple of scenes for Jonathan Schey’s Everybody Wants To F*ck Me, starring Taron Egerton and produced in collaboration with LuckyChap Entertainment – eliciting enthusiasm from delegates.
Laika showed 20 minutes of Wildwood, while Disney and Universal respectively showcased memorable sequences from Martin McDonagh’s gloomy comedy Wild Horse Nine and Christopher Nolan’s Greek epic The Odyssey.
Star power
CineEurope doesn’t traditionally bring in much on-screen talent – Barcelona is a long way from California, where many actors reside. Amazon MGM Studios, perhaps motivated by the desire to make a large impact in its first year presenting at CineEurope, bucked the trend by bringing out Michael B Jordan to talk up The Thomas Crown Affair, which he stars in, produces and directs.
Tom Cruise, not physically present, was nevertheless a lurking force. Warner Bros showed a brief film celebrating his numerous iconic roles, before segueing into a segment on the Cruise/Alejandro Inarritu collaboration Digger. Paramount utilised Cruise as narrator of a Jon M Chu-directed brief film celebrating the studio’s legacy, which wrapped up by revealing the actor seated on top of the iconic Paramount Water Tower in Los Angeles.
The elephant in the room: the merger
The mismatch between what was said (and not said) on stage and what delegates were actually talking about came into piercing relief with the presentations from Warner Bros and Paramount. Warner Bros’ president of global theatrical distribution Jeff Goldstein accepted CineEurope’s distributor of the year award immediately before leading his studio’s slate presentation, which made no reference to the possibility this might be his swansong at the convention wearing a WB hat.
For Paramount, president of international theatrical distribution Mark Viane initially seemed to be alluding to the merger when he talked about “a defining moment for Paramount Pictures” where “the future has never been brighter”. However, it soon became apparent that he meant within Paramount itself, where greater investment has seen a ramping up of production and a burgeoning slate.
Still, given the packed slates presented by Warner Bros and Paramount, delegates were left scratching their heads: how could a single leadership possibly manage such a full-to-bursting film portfolio in the future, and if the studios retain separate structures, what exactly is the point of the merger and where will the synergy reside?
CineEurope is the annual convention presented by Film Expo Group and UNIC (International Union of Cinemas). This year’s event was hosted at Barcelona’s CCIB convention centre, June 22-25.
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