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Warner brings 'Barbie,' Oprah and DC superheroes to CinemaCon

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Agence France Presse

LSA VEGAS, United States - Celebrating its 100th year, Warner Bros unveiled a packed lineup of new big-screen films at CinemaCon on Tuesday, from a live-action &quot;Barbie&quot; comedy to Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg&#x27;s remake of &quot;The Color Purple.&quot;The historic Hollywood studio also used its presentation at the annual Las Vegas gathering to tease a &quot;10-year plan&quot; to relaunch its DC superhero films, which include beloved characters such as Batman and Superman.David Zaslav, who spearheaded last year&#x27;s corporate merger of Warner and Discovery, took to the stage personally to court an audience predominantly made up of theater owners.&quot;We don&#x27;t want to do direct-to-streaming movies,&quot; said Zaslav, whose predecessor was slammed for releasing Warner films directly onto its streaming platform HBO Max –- recently rebranded as Max.&quot;We&#x27;re in no rush to bring the movies to Max.&quot;Across a two-and-a-half-hour presentation, Zaslav and fellow Warner bosses brought out A-list stars including Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya.Robbie and Gosling co-star in &quot;Barbie,&quot; out July 21, which finds the ubiquitous blonde doll living in a dreamlike, pink-hued world, before one day starting to question her too-perfect reality and travelling to real-life Los Angeles.&quot;Everyone knows Barbie, and she&#x27;s never been on the big screen before,&quot; said director Greta Gerwig, who drew inspiration from &quot;The Wizard of Oz&quot; as well as disco music culture.&quot;They made life-size Barbie houses... everything was extraordinary,&quot; she said.Gosling said making the film was &quot;like a fever dream,&quot; explaining: &quot;I was living my life, and then one day I was bleaching my hair, shaving my legs and wearing bespoke neon outfits and rollerblading down Venice Beach.&quot;Oprah Winfrey took to the stage to introduce her and Steven Spielberg&#x27;s new version of &quot;The Color Purple,&quot; out Christmas Day.The movie is based on the Broadway musical adaptation of Alice Walker&#x27;s novel about Black women enduring trauma, sexual abuse and racism in the rural Deep South in the early 20th century.&quot;The reason why it&#x27;s not your mama&#x27;s &#x27;Color Purple&#x27; -- but your mama&#x27;s gonna really like it -- is because the musical factor is so dynamic, and the magical realism is so perfected here,&quot; said Winfrey.Winfrey starred in the previous 1985 film, earning an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress, and is a producer on the new version.Chalamet introduced footage from two new films in which he stars.He appears in &quot;Wonka,&quot; set for December release, as a young, idealistic version of Roald Dahl&#x27;s famous chocolatier, whose efforts to launch a magical candy empire are blocked by a sinister &quot;chocolate cartel.&quot;Chalamet described the &quot;bizarre&quot; process of shooting the origin story -- which involved &quot;a lot of swimming in pools of actual chocolate.&quot;He also returns for &quot;Dune: Part Two,&quot; the second and final part of Denis Villeneuve&#x27;s Oscar-winning adaptation of Frank Herbert&#x27;s epic sci-fi novel, which is due out in November.Austin Butler, Lea Seydoux, Christopher Walken and Florence Pugh join the cast for a sequel that Villeneuve described as an &quot;action-packed epic war movie.&quot;<div>&#x27;10-year plan&#x27;</div>The presentation was rounded off with Warner&#x27;s &quot;DC Universe&quot; of superhero films.The DC movies, though popular, have in recent times suffered from various production issues and casting U-turns, and been largely overshadowed by the rival, record-grossing Marvel films.James Gunn (&quot;Guardians of the Galaxy&quot;) and Peter Safran (&quot;Aquaman&quot;) were recently brought in as new heads of the division.This year, the studio will release &quot;The Flash,&quot; &quot;Blue Beetle&quot; and &quot;Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.&quot;Though those films were made under Warner&#x27;s previous regime, Gunn said they will &quot;lead perfectly into the DCU slate that we have coming up starting in 2024.&quot;&quot;Superman: Legacy,&quot; directed by Gunn, is already scheduled for July 2025.Safran said the future DC movies would be &quot;vast, interconnected and filled with promise and possibility,&quot; and promised he and Gunn are &quot;cracking into&quot; the universe&#x27;s &quot;first chapter.&quot;Zaslav, a self-professed &quot;lover of DC,&quot; told the audience that Warner has a new &quot;10-year plan&quot; for the titles.CinemaCon, which runs until Thursday at Caesars Palace, provides Hollywood studios a chance to showcase their upcoming films to movie theater bosses -- while wheeling out the industry&#x27;s biggest stars to whip up excitement.

Celebrating its 100th year, Warner Bros unveiled a packed lineup of new big-screen films at CinemaCon on Tuesday, from a live-action 'Barbie' comedy to Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg's remake of 'The Color Purple.'