Tom Rothman came to the desert with a message for movie theater owners: “Get off the ad crack.”
At CinemaCon, the annual exhibition industry conference unfolding this week in Las Vegas, Rothman bluntly told the cinema operators in the audience at Caesars Palace that they needed to cut back on the trailers and commercials that can last for roughly 30 minutes before the opening credits even roll.
“Get rid of the endless advertising and substantially shorten the long pre-shows,” Rothman, who serves as the chairman and CEO of Sony’s Motion Picture Group, said on stage at the Colosseum while teasing the studio’s upcoming slate.
He noted that frequent moviegoers now show up a half hour late to avoid all the spots (something that reserved seating has made easier than ever before). Rothman said that means many people “don’t even see the trailers,” which results in “enticements gone to waste.”
Rothman predicted that the 2026 box office, which has already benefitted from hits like “Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and “Project Hail Mary,” will rebound in a big way. But he acknowledged that attendance still trails pre-pandemic levels.
Rothman has been a vociferous defender of the big screen, pushing studios to embrace longer windows so that movies will stay in cinemas longer. That was a theme that Rothman returned to at CinemaCon, pressing exhibitors to hold strong and agree not to show movies that quickly appear on streaming services or on-demand platforms.
“Enforce longer windows,” Rothman said. “Yes, even if that means you cannot play every film.”
In addition to stumping for exhibition, Rothman has practically begged Hollywood to invest in new stories along with all the franchise fare. In a recent New York Times op-ed, for instance, Rothman, the longest-serving studio chief, wrote, “For all the success of films driven by existing intellectual property, originality is essential to movies. Neither movie theaters nor the art form itself can survive without at least some originality. After all, you can’t make a sequel to nothing.”
Sony’s slate includes sequels to “Spider-Man” and “Jumanji,” but also original fare such as the family-friendly comedy “The Breadwinner” and the literary adaptations “Klara and the Sun” and “The Nightingale.”
On Monday, Rothman noted that despite the success of premium formats like Imax that carry higher fees, consumers are dealing with escalating costs that have made them more price sensitive.
“Affordability is by far the number one economic issue among the majority of Americans going to the movies,” Rothman said, pushing cinemas to find ways to offer cheaper alternatives for audiences worried about paying their bills.
