After a longer-than-planned absence, the CJ Marquee is back in your inbox.
The cinema business, inconveniently, did not pause while we rebuilt our newsletter machinery behind the scenes. Exhibition and distribution kept consolidating, premium formats kept multiplying, release windows kept shifting, technology vendors kept promising the future and, in many cases, actually delivering it, while audiences kept reminding everyone that theatrical still works when the movies, marketing and experience line up.
In other words, there has been no shortage of news. What the industry needs, as ever, is context.
That is why we are relaunching the CJ Marquee: to give busy cinema professionals a concise, global read on what is happening across exhibition, distribution, technology and the wider theatrical business — and, more importantly, why it matters.
We have been away from the newsletter for nearly 18 months, though not for lack of wanting. The short version is that our content management system required a year-long archaeological dig, a little technical exorcism and more patience than any reasonable publication should be expected to possess. We are deeply grateful to Samvel Aleksanyan, the developer who diligently tracked down the bugs, untangled the system and helped get us back to the business of sending the latest cinema industry intelligence to your inbox.
And the timing is good, because the calendar has not exactly been quiet.
We are currently working through the stories, conversations and product developments we gathered at CineEurope in Barcelona, while preparing for CineHamburg, Germany’s largest exhibitor trade show, next week. We will also be sharing updates from IND/EX 2026, the recently concluded gathering organized by Art House Convergence and Film Festival Alliance in Chicago.
Meanwhile, the CJ Cinema Summit has been moving at full speed. Last week, we held our 115th session with a CineEurope overview featuring Jaime Tarrazón, the newly elected president of UNIC and head of Spain’s exhibitor trade group Federación de Cines de España (FECE). We were also joined by Dr. Man-Nang Chong, Founder and CEO of GDC Technology, and Catherine Kahn, Head of Studio Marketing Partnerships at Barco, along with exhibitors using their respective premium cinema offerings. If you missed it, the session is available on demand.
Next week, the Summit turns to one of the more important strategic questions facing cinema operators: platformization risk.
Presented in partnership with The Boxoffice Company and Vista Group, the session will examine how third-party platforms can make exhibitors dependent on free or inexpensive tools that ultimately monetize control over the operator’s direct relationship with their own guests. Travel, hospitality and leisure have already lived through this particular plot twist. Exhibition still has time to avoid the sequel.
We will hear from executives who have seen the damage first-hand, including Otto Turton of Vue International, Cédric Gobilliard of Ennismore, John Brown of Golfback and Pierre Jean Romatet of À la Française & GREAT. You can register for the session here.
So yes, we have been busy, even if we have not been landing in your inbox every week. But we are very happy to have the CJ Marquee back where it belongs: helping readers keep pace with a theatrical business that remains global, complicated, resilient and rarely boring.
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to friends and colleagues who may not already be subscribers. You can also follow Celluloid Junkie on LinkedIn, Facebook and our other social channels, where we post updates throughout the week.
Until next week, it’s really good to be back.
Paramount Offers EU Concessions to Keep Warner Bros. Merger on Track
Paramount Skydance has submitted concessions to the European Commission in an effort to clear antitrust concerns over its planned takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, pushing the EU’s provisional decision deadline from 7 July 7 to 22 July. The Commission has not disclosed the remedies, but multiple reports indicate the key offer is Paramount exiting United International Pictures, its long-running international theatrical distribution joint venture with Universal Pictures. For exhibitors, this is the real pressure point: not whether another mega-deal makes Wall Street happy, but who controls access to studio supply in key overseas markets.
UIP, jointly owned by Paramount and Universal, was formed in 1981 and has distributed more than 1,000 films internationally. Paramount’s willingness to walk away from that arrangement underlines how valuable regulatory clearance has become for a deal valued at USD $110 billion including debt. There is a certain Hollywood poetry here: to create one new media giant, Paramount may first have to dismantle one of the industry’s oldest international distribution marriages. Call it conscious uncoupling, Brussels-style.
The deal is not home free. It is also being reviewed in Europe under foreign subsidies rules because of backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi’s L’imad Holding Company, while the U.K. has signaled it may intervene on public-interest grounds tied to news, children’s programming and streaming. The U.S. Department of Justice has cleared the transaction, but potential state-level challenges remain. With Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders due a 25-cent-per-share quarterly “ticking fee” if the deal does not close after September 30, regulatory delay is no longer just a calendar problem; it is a cash meter running in public.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Disney Clarifies Infinity Vision with New Technical Details
Disney has put sharper edges around Infinity Vision, confirming that the program is a certification and marketing label for premium non-IMAX auditoriums rather than a new cinema technology or proprietary format. During the ICTA’s Barcelona pre-CineEurope seminar Disney’s Head of Global Theatrical Distribution, Andrew Cripps, said Infinity Vision was voluntary and still being refined. Then, during CineEurope the studio descirbed later described it more explicitly as a certification program and launched InfinityVisionTickets.com to help moviegoers identify participating PLF screens.
The newly stated requirements give exhibitors more to work with: screens must be at least 45 feet wide, offer Dolby Atmos, 7.1 sound or an immersive equivalent, and hit 14 footlamberts for 2D projection and/or 6 footlamberts for 3D. That moves Infinity Vision beyond pure logo-slinging, though not all the way to a THX-style audit regime. Cripps made clear Disney does not have teams inspecting auditoriums, which leaves the practical verification process — and how consistently standards will be applied across territories — as the real make-or-break issue.
The commercial logic is obvious. Disney needs a shorthand for premium exhibitor-owned PLFs, especially with “Avengers: Endgame – Encore” serving as the September test run before “Avengers: Doomsday” in December. But the bigger industry question is whether Infinity Vision becomes a shared PLF language or remains a Disney-driven workaround for a crowded premium marketplace. Exhibitors may welcome the marketing support, but unless other studios adopt the label, Infinity Vision risks becoming another badge in the format soup — now with slightly better seasoning.
Source: Celluloid Junkie
Lotte-Megabox Merger Collapses, Leaving Korea’s Big Three Intact
The proposed merger between South Korea’s Lotte Cinema and Megabox has officially fallen apart after more than a year of negotiations, with Lotte Shopping terminating the memorandum of understanding on June 30. The deal would have combined Korea’s second- and third-largest cinema chains into a new market leader with close to half the country’s screens, leapfrogging CJ CGV. On paper, it was the kind of consolidation play that makes sense in a post-pandemic market. In practice, someone still had to pay for it.
That question appears to have done most of the damage. Reports cite disagreements over valuation, equity ratios and outside investment, while Megabox parent JoongAng Group’s mid-June court-supervised rehabilitation filing turned a difficult tie-up into something closer to a rescue mission. The companies had reportedly been seeking up to KRW 400 billion (USD $257.2 million) in outside investment. Lotte, meanwhile, had less incentive to inherit the headache after Lotte Cultureworks posted KRW 124.6 billion (USD $80.1 million) in first-quarter revenue and KRW 7.9 billion (USD $5.1 million) in operating profit.
With the deal dead, CJ CGV, Lotte Cinema and Megabox return to three-way combat, which may be better for competition but less tidy for balance sheets. Lotte is expected to focus on upgrading its estate with advanced projection, stronger sound auditoriums and more recliner seating, while Megabox and affiliate Plus M will be hoping Na Hong-jin’s “Hope” does more than live up to its title when it opens 15 July. Korea’s box office has shown signs of life in 2026, but the lesson remains blunt: consolidation can steady a market, but it cannot replace a reliable pipeline of must-see local films.
Source: Variety
China’s Box Office Falls 40% in 2026, But Summer Slate Offers a Lifeline
China’s theatrical market is producing a classic glass-half-full, glass-half-empty read. First-half 2026 box office fell 40.6% year-on-year to RMB 17.35 billion (USD $2.56 billion), with 421 million admissions from 73.29 million screenings and an average ticket price of RMB41.10 (USD $6.06). Excluding pandemic years, that is the weakest first-half result since 2014. Yet by July 3, full-year grosses had already topped RMB17.5 billion (USD $2.58 billion), giving local outlets a much easier positive headline.
The sharper issue is hit concentration. “Pegasus 3” dominated with RMB4.42 billion (USD $652 million), followed by “Dear You” with RMB 1.93 billion (USD $285 million), “Blades Of The Guardians: Wind Rises In The Desert” with RMB 1.44 billion (USD $212 million), “Scare Out” with RMB 1.36 billion (USD $201 million), and “Boonie Bears: The Hidden Protector” with RMB 1.07 billion (USD $158 million). Those were the only five films to cross RMB 1 billion (USD $147 million), meaning China still has plenty of event-movie firepower, but the spaces between the hits are getting drafty.
A more optimistic take is that the summer has not yet delivered the cavalry charge. As of July 4, June-August grosses, including presales, had passed RMB 1.8 billion (USD $265 million), with a crowded slate of roughly 80-plus films lined up. Across Greater China, the lesson is becoming hard to miss: theatrical recovery is less about sheer volume than culturally specific films that feel unavoidable to local audiences.
Source: Screen Daily
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Celluloid Junkie is the leading online resource dedicated to the global film and cinema business. The Marquee is our newsletter focused on motion picture exhibition; keeping industry professionals informed of important news, the latest trends and insightful analysis