Leonardo DiCaprio and Quentin Tarantino tease Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Leonardo DiCaprio and Quentin Tarantino surprised an audience of theatre owners with a personal appearance to promote their new film also starring Brad Pitt.

The director and actor showed up at CinemaCon at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas to hype Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, despite the fact they have not yet shot a frame of the movie.

“It’s hard to speak about a film that we haven’t done yet,” DiCaprio said on stage.

The “hush-hush” film will take place in Hollywood in 1969 at the “height of the counter-culture explosion,” Tarantino said.

“This is probably the closest to ‘Pulp Fiction’ that I’ve done,” he added. The director also said that Pitt and DiCaprio together will be “the most exciting star dynamic duo since Robert Redford and Paul Newman”.

Tarantino also took the opportunity to remind the theatre owners at the convention, that he too is an exhibitor – he owns the historic New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles.

Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman Tom Rothman assured the theatre owners that his studio is dedicated to appealing to a range of audiences — from global franchises such as Spider-Man and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series to family films, action pics and comedies.

The studio also rolled out intense new footage from Venom, which Tom Hardy said he wanted to do for his son, and The Girl In The Spider’s Web, with The Crown star Claire Foy in the role of Lisbeth Salander who, Rothman said, makes Wonder Woman look like a Powerpuff Girl.

“The thing I think makes this special and truly, truly compelling is that you can’t describe her,” Foy said.

Director Fede Alvarez, who was behind the horror hit Don’t Breathe, said that there is an audience demand for good-quality filmmaking.

“I believe in movies that provoke. Movies you cannot ignore. Movies that hit the cultural conversation. I’m confident this movie will hit all fronts, Alvarez said of The Girl In The Spider’s Web.

Rothman also said that a Jumanji sequel, with Dwayne Johnson, will be coming in December 2019.

“Don’t rush to give all those screens to Star Wars again,” Rothman said.

The Johnson-led reboot, Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle became a massive hit in the early part of the year, making over 956 million US dollars worldwide.

The CinemaCon convention features massive presentations from each of the major studios, in addition to a few of the smaller ones, like Amazon, with sizzle reels and stars to wow the theatre owners with what is coming up and why theatres should be excited about the fresh movies on the horizon.

Alternating at times between a variety show and a business meeting, Sony’s presentation featured everything from Will Ferrell promoting the comedy Holmes & Watson by singing My Heart Will Go On and talking about winning 50,000 dollars playing roulette earlier in the evening, to actress Gina Rodriguez, in support of the action pic Miss Bala, stressing the importance of the Latino movie-going audience.

“Latinos make up every one in four tickets sold,” Rodriguez said. “To give them a project like this feels like such a gift, such a blessing for your audience.”

According to the Motion Picture Association of America, Latinos made up 18% of the population in 2016, but represented 23% of frequent moviegoers.

Sony showed rough footage from its animated Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, which features the voice of Shameik Moore as Miles Morales/Spider-Man.

“I’m not the only kid who imagined himself being Spider-Man,” said Moore.

And Matthew McConaughey was on hand, too, to tease the gritty period piece White Boy Rick, in which he plays a hustler and a schemer and all-around bad, but well-meaning father to a teenage boy who ends up becoming an undercover FBI informant.

“Wait till you see this performance,” McConaughey said of the unknown actor, Richie Merritt, who plays the lead.

From studio executives, to the filmmakers behind the projects, all stressed the quality and diversity of the upcoming films.

“We’re dedicated to the range of audience, including having a staunch, and increasingly rare dedication to originality,” Rothman said. “We are not all superheroes all the time. But we are in the global franchise business.”