CinemaCon 2025: Sony Pictures Previews New Karate Kid and ‘Bingeable’ Beatles Movies

Sony Pictures to theater owners: Don’t get multiplexes a body bag just yet.

The lone major movie studio without its own streaming service kicked off the 2025 edition of CinemaCon with a robust presentation of titles coming between now and 2028 that place an emphasis on the theatrical experience.

“I want everyone to know that Sony will work with you,” said Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman, who singled out the increasing cost of movie tickets with the ever-shortening window between a film’s theatrical life and its streaming afterlife as two major areas in need of improvement.

“If theaters and studios manage for the long term to do the right things, the future will be bright,” Rothman pointedly added.

At the same time, two of the big tentpoles on Sony’s slate reflect the realities of the streaming era. May 30 brings the release of Karate Kid: Legends, the continuation of a big-screen franchise that came roaring back to life courtesy of the Netflix’ Cobra Kai, which wrapped up its six-season run in February.

But April 2028 is when the studio goes full binge-mode. That month, Sony plans to drop four films about the beloved mop-topped quartet The Beatles in theaters back-to-back-to-back-to-back.

“It’s the first bingeable theatrical experience,” Rothman said of the ambitious project, which is being overseen by Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes. He also promised exhibitors that all four movies would “dominate the culture that month” and “drive patrons of all ages to your theaters multiple times.”

“We need big cinematic events to get people out of the house,” Mendes added.

Meet the Beatles

As conceived by Mendes, each of the four movies will be told from the perspective of one of the four Beatles. To get the full experience, the films have to be seen in concert with each other.

“The Beatles changed my understanding of music,” Mendes said of his initital inspiration for wanting to tell their story onscreen. Watching his own children delight in immortal tracks like “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Yesterday” further encouraged the director to think beyond the structure of an ordinary two-hour biopic.

Mendes and Rothman introduced the CinemaCon crowd to the cinematic Fab Four: Harris Dickinson plays John Lennon, Paul Mescal plays Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan plays Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn plays George Harrison. Brought onstage, the quartet did their impression of a Beatles bow and then quoted that familiar Sgt. Pepper refrain about wanting to take the lovely audience home with them.

Production on the four movies starts in the next few months and is anticipated to last a full year. It’s the first authorized set of films to be made about the band, having gotten the official sign-off from Apple Corps Ltd. as well as McCartney and Starr and the families of Lennon and Harrison.

“All four films in proximity tell their full story in a unique way,” Rothman said.

The best around

The Beatles weren’t the only legends onstage during Sony’s CinemaCon panel. Veteran karate kid Ralph Macchio appeared alongside his protégé Ben Wang to promote Karate Kid: Legends. Before the stars took the stage, the audience was treated to an in-theater performance that loosely recreated the climax from 1986’s The Karate Kid Part II, complete with drums, paper lanterns, and sparring.

“It’s an honor to be back in theaters as Daniel LaRusso,” Macchio said after he and Wang were introduced—a tacit acknowledgement of his just-concluded stint on Cobra Kai, which originated as a YouTube Red series before moving to Netflix.

Although the show was produced by Sony’s television arm, the new film is keeping it at arm’s length. In interviews, Macchio has referred to the franchise’s film and television extensions as inhabiting “separate ecosystems.”

But Legends has clearly learned some moves from Cobra Kai, starting with its central idea of bringing two veteran teachers together to train the next generation. In addition to Macchio, the film features Jackie Chan reprising his role as Mr. Han from the 2010 Karate Kid reboot and the two martial arts mentors team up to assist Wang in training for a major tournament.

Sony is also counting on the cross-generational goodwill surrounding Cobra Kai to carry over into Legends. “It’s a true, four-quadrant all-audience crowdpleaser,” vowed Sony president Sanford Panitch.

For Daniel’s sake, let’s just hope it’s not another cruel summer.

Coming soon-ish

Sony’s other big 2025 releases include 28 Years Later, the long-awaited continuation of Danny Boyle’s zombie series; Darren Aronofksy’s Caught Stealing, a ’90s-era heist movie starring Austin Butler and Zoe Kravitz; and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a fantastical romance that pairs Margot Robbie with Colin Farrell.

But the films that got the biggest response from the crowd involved a certain wall-crawler who won’t be ready for his close-up for at least a year or two. Tom Holland officially returns as Spider-Man on July 31, 2026, and the actor sent a video message from Greece—where he’s currently filming Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey—revealing that the film’s title will be Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Then on June 4, 2027, Miles Morales will swing back into theaters for Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, the third and final chapter in Sony’s animated Spider-Man series. That’s four full years after the release of the second installment, Across the Spider-Verse, but the filmmakers promise the wait will be worth it.

“Because we knew and know how important this franchise is, we just could not run it back,” explained producer Phil Lord, vowing that Beyond would be “bigger and bolder” than its predecessors with boundary-breaking animation styles that were teased in an trailer filled with a mixture of finished and unfinished scenes. It’s also the first Sony animated feature to be made expressly for large format screens like IMAX.

You might say that the Spider-Man movies sum up Sony’s overall pitch to theaters at this year’s CinemaCon: It can do whatever a spider can… and what a streamer can’t.