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Cinema United Announces Leadership Changes as Neuhauser Plans 2028 CinemaCon Exit

Cinema United used this week’s Fall Summit in Los Angeles to announce several leadership changes, most significantly that longtime CinemaCon Managing Director Mitch Neuhauser will retire following the 2028 show. Matt Pollock, who has worked alongside Neuhauser for nearly two decades, becomes co-managing director immediately and will take over the lead role after Neuhauser departs on 30 June 2028.

That’s an unusually long runway which is arguably necessary. Neuhauser has been closely identified with CinemaCon since helping transform ShoWest into the association-owned event in 2011, and announcing Pollock’s succession nearly two shows in advance removes any uncertainty around one of the exhibition industry’s most important annual gatherings.

Cinema United also promoted Amanda Martin from chief of staff to the newly created role of SVP, External Affairs, where she will oversee advocacy, strategic partnerships and educational programming, while Erin Von Hoetzendorff becomes VP, Membership and Global Affairs with an expanded mandate covering international exhibitors.

Those moves suggest the association is strengthening more than its internal management structure. Advocacy, global membership and industry partnerships have all become more central to Cinema United’s remit in recent years, particularly as the organization has sought a broader role beyond its traditional focus on domestic exhibition.

Meanwhile, Margot Robbie and Jason Blum joined Cinema United’s Filmmaker Leadership Council, alongside Jerry Bruckheimer, Emma Thomas, Ryan Coogler, Brad Bird, Jason Reitman and Celine Song. These announcements look less like routine personnel changes than an effort to put the pieces in place for Cinema United’s growth, including an orderly CinemaCon succession, a wider international reach and closer ties between exhibitors and filmmakers.

Source: Celluloid Junkie

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Event Cinema Starts Looking Less Alternative

The autumn theatrical calendar is filling up with programming that would once have been relegated to the catch-all category of “alternative content.” HYBE Cine Fest 2026 may be the clearest example yet of how much that definition has expanded. The week-long global program includes live cinema broadcasts of BTS concerts from Buenos Aires and São Paulo, concert films from Seventeen, Tomorrow X Together and Enhypen, a participatory HYBE Cheering Party and, at selected locations, merchandise, photo zones and other fan experiences. The festival will reach more than 60 territories in October.

Music programming is hardly stopping there. “Ozzy & Black Sabbath: Back to the Beginning,” documenting Osbourne’s final performance with Black Sabbath, begins a limited worldwide cinema run on 28 October, while “Rammstein – Live in Mexico City” follows on 4 November. The latter is already confirmed for roughly 1,200 cinemas across 45 countries, turning three sold-out stadium concerts filmed in 2022 into new theatrical inventory four years later.

Nor is the opportunity limited to concert films. Nor is the opportunity limited to concert films. Fathom Entertainment, Saga Arts and Warner Bros. are bringing “V for Vendetta” back to theatres on 1 and 5 November for its 20th anniversary, complete with an exclusive featurette from director James McTeigue. Naturally the re-release is being built around the film’s famously significant date turns a familiar catalogue title into something closer to an annual occasion than a conventional repertory booking.

Then you have BBC Studios, CinemaLive and Fathom Entertainment who are bringing “Doctor Who: The Satan Pit Extended Cut” to more than 1,000 cinemas across six countries on 23 November for Doctor Who Day. Two television episodes first broadcast 20 years ago have been re-edited into a movie-length presentation with restored deleted scenes, previously unseen extended footage and an exclusive filmmaker interview.

At some point, if there is enough “alternative content” filling cinema calendars around the world, the industry may have to stop calling it alternative.

Source: Celluloid Junkie

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Bleecker Street and Marcus Theatres Recruit for a Changing Theatrical Market

Two executive moves this week highlight the kind of experience theatrical companies are prioritizing as they increasingly compete for audiences.

Bleecker Street named Frank Martinez its new head of distribution, bringing him over from A24, where he spent three years as head of theatrical sales. Martinez will oversee theatrical strategy, planning and execution for both Bleecker Street and its Crosswalk label. During his tenure at A24, the distributor’s annual domestic box office grew from USD $151 million in 2023 to more than USD $333 million so far this year, with Martinez working on releases including “Backrooms,” “Civil War,” “The Drama” and “Materialists.”

His arrival also completes an interesting bit of industry musical chairs. Martinez replaces Kyle Davies, who left Bleecker Street in August to lead distribution at AMC Theatres’ newly formed Leawood Films. In the span of a month, Bleecker Street has lost its distribution chief to an exhibitor entering distribution and replaced him with an executive from one of the most aggressive independent theatrical distributors in the market.

Meanwhile, Marcus Theatres has appointed Shannah Miller senior vice president of marketing and sales, effective 19 October. Miller joins from Fathom Entertainment, where she served as vice president of marketing and helped market more than 100 theatrical releases annually across anime, music, faith-based programming, repertory films, gaming, sports and original content.

That background feels particularly relevant at a moment when exhibitors are looking well beyond conventional studio releases to fill screens and reach specific audiences. Marcus isn’t entering the event-cinema business — it is already very much in it — but hiring an executive whose recent work has centered on turning specialized content into theatrical events suggests how important that part of the programming mix has become.

Neither appointment is revolutionary on its own. Together, however, they reflect a theatrical business in which the skills needed to find audiences, position films and create reasons to visit cinemas are becoming increasingly transferable across what were once much more clearly separated parts of the industry.

Source: Variety

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Festivals and Film Markets Find New Routes Into Cinemas

Film festivals and markets have traditionally helped movies find distributors, buyers and industry attention before audiences encounter them in commercial cinemas. Now, a trio of recent initiatives suggests that pathway is becoming considerably less linear.

The Netherlands Film Festival partnered with private-cinema operator TheAnyThing to make opening-night film “Downtown” available simultaneously with its official premiere on 25 September in three two-seat auditoriums at Pathé Utrecht Leidsche Rijn. The collaboration extends beyond opening night, with a dedicated NFF collection available across TheAnyThing’s five Dutch locations, where customers choose both the movie and their preferred starting time from a catalogue of more than 2,000 titles. The festival isn’t merely promoting theatrical attendance; it is experimenting with a form of exhibition that borrows some of the convenience consumers associate with streaming while keeping the transaction firmly inside a cinema.

In the United States, Harlem Film House has expanded its partnership with LOOK Dine-In Cinemas to give selected films from the 2027 Hip Hop Film Festival a direct route into commercial theatrical engagements. Titles chosen through the program can play LOOK locations in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. and Texas. It fits neatly with the festival’s “Checks Not Trophies” philosophy: instead of treating a festival screening as the destination, the partnership is designed to turn festival exposure into revenue-generating theatrical distribution.

Even the American Film Market is opening its screening rooms a little wider. At November’s AFM, select sales companies and producers will be able to invite members of AMC Stubs A-List and the Los Angeles-based B-List Movie Club into screenings and slate presentations at AMC Century City 15. AFM is also adding World and Market Premieres, slate showcases and “Amplified Screenings” incorporating hospitality, concessions and red-carpet elements. That gives filmmakers and sales agents something market screenings don’t normally provide: feedback from actual frequent moviegoers alongside the buyers and industry executives traditionally sitting in the room.

None of these models is likely to replace the familiar festival-to-sales-agent-to-distributor-to-exhibitor chain. But all three create additional shortcuts through it. At a moment when independent films are fighting particularly hard for theatrical attention, festivals and markets are becoming less content simply to showcase movies and increasingly interested in helping them reach moviegoers.

Source: American Film Market

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PaperAirplane’s Hangar Passes Two Million Downloads as Cinema Marketing Goes Social

PaperAirplane Media‘s The Hangar has surpassed two million downloads of studio-approved digital marketing assets, a significant milestone for a platform launched in October 2020 to solve the rather mundane but logistically convoluted problem of getting the right promotional materials into exhibitors’ hands quickly.

The scale of The Hangar has changed considerably since then. Annual asset additions grew from 2,454 in 2020 to more than 61,000 in 2025, while the number of participating studios, distributors and content partners increased from 11 to more than 105. The platform now serves 27 territories and averages approximately 1,800 unique users each month.

And what are those users downloading? During the summer, social-media video represented 27% of downloads and social graphics another 23%. Digital lobby posters accounted for 19%, followed by web banners at 12% and production stills at roughly 8%. In other words, half of the assets exhibitors pulled from The Hangar were destined for social media.

That is a useful snapshot of how local theatrical marketing has evolved. Exhibitors still need a poster in the lobby, but nowadays they also need a steady supply of video, graphics and other ready-to-use material capable of reaching moviegoers well beyond the cinema itself (that’s a fancy way of saying TikTok and Instagram). The Hangar’s two-million-download milestone therefore says as much about the growing volume and complexity of marketing an individual theatrical release as it does about the success of the platform distributing the assets.

Source: Celluloid Junkie

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