CinemaCon 2025 Day 1 Recap: Spider-Man: Brand New Day & Beyond the Spider-Verse Reveals, The Beatles, Karate Kid: Legends

411mania is back once again for this year’s CinemaCon. CinemaCon 2025 kicked things off on Monday in Las Vegas with Sony Pictures presenting its keynote studio presentation. Sony Pictures presented a wide swath of new features, including showcasing new films from Danny Boyle (28 Years Later), Darren Aronofsky (Caught Stealing), plus big announcements for the Spider-Man franchise and what’s sure to be an epic film series about the iconic rock band, The Beatles. Time to dive in!

Sony Pictures Studio Showcase

Anaconda stars Paul Rudd and Jack Black provided a comedic pre-recorded intro video from the set of their film, which arrives in September. They introduced Sony Pictures head Tom Rothman, who was live in attendance for the presentation. He joked, “Hi, I’m Seth Rogen,” in reference to The Studio TV series.

The first major showcase of the night was the next installment of the 28 Days Later franchise with 28 Years Later. Director Danny Boyle took the stage for the showcase, introducing the next chapter in the post-apocalyptic horror franchise. At the very least, it’s great to see Boyle returning and spearheading this new trilogy. Set 28 years after the original, the new film sees survivors in a small isolated island village in a post-Infected era. In the newly revealed trailer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson looks to be one of the survivors and main characters. Ralph Fiennes is also introduced in the sequel and does voice-over in the trailer. It looks like the small island village is sadly overrun by the Infected. The imagery looked intense and rather unsettling, especially the skeletal, bony Infected. There’s almost a sense like the Rage Infection has mutated to some degree.

Boyle relayed that in this new trilogy, they’ve already completed filming on the second film, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which is directed by Nia DaCosta, who was also in attendance for the showcase. She offered a still of Ralph Fiennes’ character. He appears to be a man who is totally far gone since civilization became overrun. His look kind of reminded me of the War Boys from Mad Max. Boyle revealed that the third film doesn’t have financing yet, and they will be counting on their theatrical partners to help. 28 Years Later arrives on June 20, 2025. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is due out January 16, 2026.

Also featured in the showcase is the delayed, long-awaited Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse. Co-writer and producer Phil Lord and co-directors Bob Persichetti and Justin K. Thompson were all in attendance for the presentation. We finally received clarity on the film’s release date, which is June 4, 2027. Interestingly enough, the threequel was originally supposed to come out in Spring 2024 before the multiple delays. We got an early look at the film. It was a nice, short teaser trailer, with new footage of the alternate version of Miles Morales, aka Miles G. Morales/Prowler (Jharrel Jerome) from Earth-42, along with the now highly powerful and dangerous The Spot (Jason Schwartzman), who looks like he can now level buildings with his abilities. I’m glad the story is finally continuing, and hopefully it will deliver on the epic conclusion to the animated Spider-Man trilogy. The finale of the last movie sets up a potentially epic climax.

Director Zach Cregger was in attendance to talk about his upcoming planned Resident Evil reboot. Production hasn’t started yet, so there was nothing to show yet, but the presentation did feature a new logo for the feature, and Cregger talked a bit about his inspiration for the new feature. He talked about that moment during the video games where you are low on resources and you are about to face a terrifying monster right around the corner, and that’s the feeling he wants to capture with his new film. He definitely sounds like a big fan of the classic games, so we’ll see how this turns out. The new Resident Evil feature currently has a September 18, 2026 release date.

Filmmaker Kogonada introduced a presentation for his new romantic fantasy dramedy, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. The film stars Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie, who are guided through a magical trip where they can walk through doors, allowing them to relive pivotal memories of their lives, and it looks like they potentially find love in the process. The film is due out September 19.

Darren Aronofsky was live in attendance to showcase his slick-looking new crime drama, Caught Stealing. The preview to this one looked exciting. Austin Butler leads an eclectic ensemble cast. This looks much different than anything Aronofsky has done before. It looks far more humorous and quirkier than his previous films, which tend to be very bleak, sad, dark, and melancholy. This looks more like a gritty, quirky crime film, in the vein of Guy Ritchie features, but with a 1990s New York setting. Butler’s character gets mixed up in his friend’s (Matt Smith) con. Smith is like a British punk rocker/con artist. Looks to have an impressive cast. The film hits theaters on August 29.

Also during the presentation, President of Releasing Adam Bergeman showcased Sony Pictures embracing anime, with major theatrical releases planned later this year with the continuation of the popular, iconic Demon Slayer franchise. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle will be released in theaters in North America on September 12. Also, we got an update on the Chainsaw Man franchise. Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc will receive a North American theatrical release later in October, not long after its release in Japan.

Sony will also release Mamoru Hosoda’s new anime feature, Scarlet, in theaters as well. I’m glad to see Sony embracing and supporting the anime space and providing wide theatrical releases for these films, which should be seen on the big screen. Hopefully, that’s something that will continue.

The slasher horror franchise, I Know What You Did Last Summer, is back with a new installment due out July 18. Adam Bergeman revealed a new trailer for the upcoming feature. This looks to be a new legacy sequel in the vein of the recent installments of the Scream franchise. Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt are both back as Julie James and Ray Bronson. A hook killer is back stalking young people, much like the earlier films. It’s not clear if it’s Ben Willis. I think horror and slasher fans will enjoy this, along with fans of the earlier films.

Sony executive Sanford Panitch went over some upcoming films on Sony’s slate, including a reboot of Starship Troopers from director Neill Blomkamp. Panitch says the new film will be a more faithful adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s original novel. I think the prospect of a more faithful version of the novel is interesting, but we’ll see how Blomkamp approaches the source material.

We got a look at the logo for Sony’s upcoming live-action adaptation of The Legend of Zelda, which has a release date of March 26, 2027. No casting announcements yet, but we do know that Wes Ball is directing. Avi Arad producing the film is definitely a point of concern for me. 10-15 years ago, I think adapting this would’ve been impossible. But now, I do think Wes Ball might have the ability to pull this off. If he can nail Hyrule and make it feel like a real, immersive place, that will be the key to pulling off one of Nintendo’s most iconic franchises.

We got some new footage of Karate Kid: legends. Stars Ralph Macchio and Ben Wang were live in attendance to present two new scenes. The first scene shows Wang’s Li Fang being attacked by Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) in his home as a type of training exercise. The next scene shows Mr. Han meeting Daniel LaRusso. Mr. Han reveals he’s an old friend of Mr. Miyagi, and they go way back. He recruits LaRusso to help instruct Ben in the ways of karate for an epic martial arts showdown. The film hits theaters on May 30.

A new animated feature called Goat is previewed. Inspired by the real-life story of Stephen Curry, the animation looks similar to the Spider-Verse series. It will feature an underdog basketball player who is an anthropomorphized goat.
It’s due out February 13, 2026.

We got an MCU Spider-Man update from Destin Daniel Cretton. He shared a nice story about his son learning Spider-Man as his first word after looking at images of his dad’s copy of Spider-Man: Most Wanted. A prerecorded video of Tom Holland reveals Spider-Man: Brand New Day as the title, which is interesting. The new sequel will show a fresh new chapter in Peter Parker’s life after the events of No Way Home, where everyone forgot that Peter is Spider-Man. I like that they are actually using a title from a comic storyline. I was never fond of the “Home” subtitles. A July 31, 2026, release date was also revealed for the film.

The Sony presentation ended things off with Rothman and director Sam Mendes announcing the details on a series of films for The Beatles. Production will start soon and last for over a year. Mendes is directing four films, with each one centered around the respective band members that will intersect at points. However, in the boldest move, all four Beatles movies will arrive in April 2018 as a “bingeable” film series. That is a ballsy move. Mendes also revealed the cast: Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney; Joseph Quinn as George Harrison; Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr; and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon. It’s an impressive cast lineup and director, so we’ll see what happens. I don’t know how releasing all four films in the same month and year will turn out, but I understand the desire to try something different and unique for the rollout. It is risky, but I don’t think now is a bad time to take such a risk with a project such as this.

Stay tuned for more of my thoughts from CinemaCon, including other studio presentations!