Gen Z’s movie-watching habits, the magic of discovering trailers and the lure of nostalgia for simpler times were among the topics discussed Wednesday at a lively roundtable of top film and streaming marketing leaders held as part of Variety’s annual Entertainment Marketing Summit.
The five executives also detailed the “evolutionary process” that explains why video games have emerged as important material for film. And they discussed a call from Sony Pictures head Tom Rothman at CinemaCon in Las Vegas last week to urge exhibitors (and studios) to reduce the number of ads and trailers that precede movie screenings.
Matt Donnelly, Variety’s chief correspondent, moderated the annual summit, which this time featured Dwight Keynes, head of domestic marketing at Universal Pictures. Josh Goldstein, President of Global Marketing and Distribution, Paramount Pictures. Rebecca Keeley, Executive Vice President and Head of International Marketing, Distribution and Business Operations, Searchlight Pictures; Blair Rich, Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer, Legendary Entertainment; Shauna Spenley is the global chief marketing officer for direct-to-consumer at Warner Bros. Discovery.
“The data suggests that younger moviegoers, Generation Alpha and Generation Z, are becoming fans of the theatrical experience, the in-person experience. They’re driving some of the stability at the box office. We just need to make that habit deeper and stronger among them,” said Dwight Caines, director of domestic marketing for Universal Pictures, during a session in Beverly Hills.
Blair Rich, chief marketing and commercial officer at Legendary Entertainment, cited research showing that Gen Z and Alpha consumers go to the movies more often (seven times a year) than baby boomers (five times) and millennials (six times). Rich said the younger demographic is hungry for nostalgia rooted in the 1990s and earlier eras, before smartphones, social media and WiFi. They long for a glimpse of a world they have heard of but are yet to discover.
“You have to swipe a generation before you wipe them, right? They’re the first generation to grow up never leaving a screen, and they need connected social experiences,” Rich said. “What the research shows is that they’re not choosing movies as something else, they’re choosing them as a social experience.”
Kains pointed out that Universal’s success with “Super Mario Galaxy Movie” was due in part to the multigenerational appeal of the Super Mario Bros. series. After all, this property is 40 years old.
Dwight Keynes at Universal Pictures (Photo by Savion Washington/Variety)
Variety (via Getty Images)
“If you’re a parent who grew up watching this, you can now embrace the whole family,” Caines said. “If you look at the success of PG movies, that’s been a huge driver of our box office revenue.”
Donnelly noted that Hollywood’s interest in video game adaptations has skyrocketed as comic books and superheroes have been underperforming at the box office. This gave rise to anthropological observations by Goldstein.
“This was kind of an evolutionary process where these games really became meaningful to a certain generation of consumers,” he said.
Goldstein said the biggest game franchises have established fan communities, making them extremely valuable for movie marketing, citing the world of Minecraft and Activision’s “Call of Duty,” which is animated by Paramount Pictures, as titles handpicked by the company’s 43-year-old CEO, David Ellison.
“These are things that are very important to (consumers) and they have a sense of community around them. This is our intellectual property at this point in terms of the next phase of things,” Goldstein said.
Mr. Spenley worked in the gaming industry at Riot Games before joining WBD in 2024. She spoke from experience about how much time gamers spend on their favorite titles.
“League of Legends players are going to spend thousands of hours on the game, and when you go to such a large fan base and work on something that’s important to them, you have to take it pretty seriously,” Spenley said.
Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures learned a lot last year about reaching and motivating gaming communities through the gamble of “A Minecraft Movie.” Rich said it was revelatory to see how fans embraced the film and made the moviegoing experience a social media moment.
“We had never seen anything like this before. This was really described as a connecting social experience,” she said. “That’s why marketing is changing. That’s why we need to do more experiential marketing and connect people, whether it’s streaming or theatrical.”
Rich also drew parallels between young viewers’ desire for a retro view of recent historical events (see FX’s “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette”) and the broader social and cultural changes facilitated by technology.
“You have to feel the point of socialized connection, because this kind of constant disconnection is starting to paralyze people. That’s why they want something different,” Rich said. She added that Legendary and Paramount’s upcoming video game adaptation of “Street Fighter” is set in 1993 and is rated PG-13.
Paramount Pictures’ Josh Goldstein, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Shauna Spenley and Legendary Entertainment’s Blair Rich (Photo by Savion Washington/Variety)
Savion Washington
“This kind of nostalgia is kind of a cultural attraction for people. It goes back to the days when you used disposable cameras and you had to take your camera to the pharmacy to have your photos developed,” Rich said. “People long for what used to be.”
Spenley agreed, citing his experience with HBO Max’s “The Pit” over the past 14 months. The Emmy-winning medical drama, starring “ER” veteran Noah Wyle, marked a conscious effort to reinvent network TV-like procedures for streaming platforms. The series aired weekly for 15 episodes in Season 1. That’s significantly more episodes than the usual streaming season order of 8-10. It is also designed to be repeated annually, similar to traditional network series.
“What you’re seeing is these new patterns. We’ve seen ‘The Pit’ and the practice of people coming every week and saying thank you. I mean, we wouldn’t have expected 10 years ago that people would appreciate that, but they do,” Spenley said.
She added that viewers of “The Pit” want to watch new episodes every year, like old TV. “They don’t want to wait years for each installment,” Spenley said.
Keeley touched on a similar theme of a return to form when explaining how Searchlight Pictures has adapted to the post-post-corona era.
“I think a lot of what we went through during and after COVID was this budget inflation. And now we’re getting back to a model that was very successful. I feel like we’re getting a grip on that,” Kealey said. “There’s a movie coming out later this year called Wild Horse Nine, directed by Martin McDonagh, starring Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich. It’s going to be fun for everyone.”
Rebecca Keeley of Searchlight Pictures (Photo by Savion Washington/Variety)
Variety (via Getty Images)
Keeley, like his colleagues, expressed optimism that the industry is recovering, helped by young moviegoers who value the experience.
“We love our models. We love our filmmakers. They’re our brand. Others here work with different kinds of brands, but our filmmakers are our brand. That’s what feeds us as a business,” she said.
Mr. Keeley also expressed some reservations about Mr. Rothman’s call to shorten the pre-screening blocks for advertising and trailers.
“I think it’s a really fine line, because trailers are still the best way to capture that person being in the church that they want to go to, watching the movie that they want to see, and they’re likely to be habitual people who go to the movies often. So as a distributor, of course, you want to show your trailer before the movie, as many trailers as possible,” Keely said. “Actually, I like to sit and watch trailers and ads. That’s just me.”
Mr. Keynes shared Mr. Keely’s view. He suggested that the amount of pre-show advertising could naturally shrink as box office revenues increase.
“It’s really important to keep the business afloat, invest in the movie box office, get audiences back into theaters, and make sure that the revenue that comes from the box office can replace some of the revenue that’s cluttering the screens,” he said.
Mr. Keynes pointed out that there is a big difference between experiencing a movie trailer in a movie theater and watching a movie trailer online or via social platforms.
“Back in the day, you sat in your seat and the trailer ‘happened.’ You didn’t know what you were going to see. Oh, you didn’t click ‘Mario,’ you know? It happens. It’s automatically revealed. And there’s something magical about that. So I agree that we want to preserve that magic,” Caines said.
Goldstein was pretty stunned by this.
“Discovery is the best experience in the world. Discovery is like falling in love. It’s the moment you completely discover something,” Goldstein said.
“So how do you do that?” Keynes asked SRO industry insiders. “Everyone, let’s go to the movies.”
(Top photo: Universal’s Dwight Keynes, Legendary’s Blair Rich, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Shauna Spenley, Paramount’s Josh Goldstein, Searchlight’s Rebecca Keeley, Variety’s Matt Donnelly)
