With CinemaCon coming to a close yesterday at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, we wanted to catch you up on what was a very busy week of kids content announcements from major studios and media companies.
This 13-year-old annual gathering of movie theater owners typically attracts between 2,000 to 3,500 attendees. And the goal is to showcase upcoming feature projects and drop announcements in order to build anticipation among these exhibitors for box-office performance in the year ahead.
Paramount took the stage to formally confirm that a crossover film is in the works featuring characters from both G.I. Joe and Transformers. (Last year’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts teased this imminent mashup, which has previously only occurred in comic books.) Steven Spielberg will executive produce the pic, which is circling a release date in either 2025 or 2026.
With a busy 2025 slate to juggle, Paramount also dropped a bunch of voice cast announcements for its upcoming animated tentpole films. The Smurfs Movie (February 14, 2025) has rounded out a massive cast with Kurt Russell and John Goodman, who will join Nick Offerman, Natasha Lyonne, JP Karliak, Dan Levy, Amy Sedaris, Nick Kroll, James Corden, Octavia Spencer, Hannah Waddingham, Sandra Oh, Alex Winter, Billie Lourd, Xolo Maridueña—and Rihanna, who’s set to play the role of Smurfette.
For its next Avatar movie—working title Aang: The Last Airbender (October 10, 2025)—Paramount has recruited Dave Bautista, Eric Nam, Dionne Quan, Jessica Matten and Román Zaragoza. And finally, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants (December 19, 2025) will bring back the following voice actors from Nickelodeon’s original animated series: Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Clancy Brown, Carolyn Lawrence, Rodger Bumpass and Mr. Lawrence.
Paramount also announced 2026 release dates for its PAW Patrol threequel (July 31) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 2 (October 9).
Looking to encourage movie-going among younger audiences, LA-based animation distributor Viva Pictures used CinemaCon to announce a “Kiddo Kompanion Pass” initiative enabling theaters to provide two kids tickets for the price of one. This will go into effect starting with upcoming releases Dragonkeeper (May 3) from Spain’s Guardián de Dragones and China Film Animation; and 200% Wolf (August 23) from Australia’s Flying Bark Productions.
Much of CinemaCon’s other kids content buzz centered around exclusive trailers and sneak-peeks. Disney, in particular, generated a lot of excitement with a full half hour of footage from Pixar’s Inside Out 2 (June 14, pictured), along with a preview of Moana 2 (November 27). Incidentally, these sequels finished second and third in Kidscreen’s recent movie survey asking readers to place their bets on this year’s most likely box-office winners. A trailer of Mufasa: The Lion King (December 20) was also presented.
Moana 2 will be competing head-to-head on Thanksgiving weekend with Wicked: Part One, and NBCUniversal’s presentation offered an extended look at this live-action musical, as well as some unfinished footage from DreamWorks Animation’s CG feature The Wild Robot (September 20), which should help drive families to theaters this fall.