Hollywood heavyweights Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Drew Barrymore and others gather to launch blockbuster season

WANT to know what movies you’ll be watching later this year? Hollywood launched its blockbuster season today with plenty of sneak peeks.

CHANNING Tatum, Johnny Depp, Melissa McCarthy, Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Clint Eastwood, Mila Kunis and Morgan Freeman took the stage to plug their new movies as Warner Bros presented their blockbuster season slate at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday.

But the show was all but stolen by a message from a director who wasn’t even there and a surprise glimpse at a movie that won’t be released until Christmas: the final chapter of The Hobbit trilogy, There and Back Again.

Peter Jackson, who is in post-production on the move in Wellington, sent a taped message to cinema exhibitors at the convention, introducing a look back at his entire Middle-earth journey, with just a few precious seconds of footage from There and Back Again revealed at the end.

In the new footage, Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) was seen asking Legolas (Orlando Bloom), “What is it you know?” To which the elf replied, “Nothing for certain. It’s what I fear may come.”

After that flashed brief scenes of battle, heroism from the likes of Bard and elf Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), dwarf leader Thorin (Richard Armitage) wandering through what appeared to be thick strands of golden rope and a gold-clad Elrond (Hugo Weaving) drawing his sword and charging, while a voiceover from Gandalf warned: “The time is upon us, we all must choose what side we’re on.”

That was just a bonus, however. Warner Bros’ focus was the films they have set for the US summer, our winter.

Several of the productions are also backed (as well as being distributed in Australia) by Australian company Village a Roadshow.

Depp and Freeman, who had earlier greeted each other with a hug, took the stage first to introduce their film, Transcendence, out April 24 in Australia.

“He’s God, by the way,” said Depp, pointing a thumb at Freeman.

Executive produced by Christopher Nolan and directed by his Inception cinematographer Wally

News_Image_File: Here’s God, by the way ... Actors Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman and director Wally Pfister at CinemaCon to launch their film Transcendence. Picture: Getty

Pfister, extended footage shown from Transcendence suggests it is a far more epic and exciting movie than the first trailer managed to show.

Pfister said the story was inspired by the question, “What would happen if we could upload a human mind into a computer?” The movie’s answer seems to be: nothing good.

Depp is a dying scientist who is uploaded, then proceeds to infect the earth and its population.

Next came a look at creature feature Godzilla (out May 15), introduced by director Gareth Edwards. The Brit apologised that his leading lizard could not be here: “He’s in a play on Broadway.”

The Godzilla footage threw up everything: a tsunami, a bridge falling, planes exploding and human star Bryan Cranston giving it more than the average monster film would deserve. His character is heard to warn: “You have no idea what is coming and it is going to send us back to the Stone Age!”

It was enough to move the next star on stage, Drew Barrymore, to tears. “I am creating life and I started crying so hard in that trailer,” said the heavily pregnant actor.

Her Blended co-star Adam Sandler joked that the real reason they’d come to Vegas was to “find out who did this to Drew! She can’t raise this child alone!”

Blended reunites Sandler and Barrymore with director Frank Coraci 16 years after the trio hit big with The Wedding Singer.

Blended (released June 19), appears more family oriented in the vein of Sandler’s Grown Ups franchise. While the film’s US rating would limit it to those aged over 13, Sandler told cinema owners that if any eight year olds should ask to buy a ticket, they should let the kids in. The worst the film could show them? “Two rhinos banging each other.”

News_Image_File: Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler introduce their film Blended at CinemaCon today. Picture: AP

A preview of Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow showed the Tom Cruise vehicle to be a Groundhog Day set in a post apocalyptic world where humans are fighting off some kind of alien invasion. Cruise catches their ability to “reset the day”. It opens June 5.

Clint Eastwood then arrived to a standing ovation. The veteran actor and filmmaker has directed a big-screen version of hit stage musical Jersey Boys, about Franki Valli and the Four Seasons. “We had a lot to live up to,” Eastwood said of his adaptation.

As well as using the cast of the US stage production, Eastwood appears to have been very faithful to the stage story, with actors talking to camera and the hit songs still eliciting goosebumps. Jersey Boys opens June 26.

Melissa McCarthy looks to have another sure-fire comedy success on her hands with a film she wrote, Tammy. Introducing footage with her husband Ben Falcone, she joked, “For the first time ever, I can say I’m sleeping with the director.”

Falcone retorted that he’d slept with three of the actors from his cast, which also boasts Toni Collette, Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates, Dan Aykroyd and Allison Janney.

“Four for me,” said McCarthy, one-upping her partner.

Falcone called Tammy (out July 3) “a rowdy road trip movie” and McCarthy is at her crude, rough and tumble best: riding a jet ski, attempting to give mouth to mouth to a deer, getting fired and chatting up men as only she could.

Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis stuck to the autocue while talking about Jupiter Ascending (released July 17).

News_Rich_Media: This trailer is a first look at the film starring Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum written, produced and directed by The Wachowskis.

The first original sci-if story from the Wachowskis since The Matrix, the new movie looks set to make that trilogy look low budget and small in scale.

Still hard to know what it’s really about, though. But we can tell you that Tatum sports elf ears, goth make-up and a kind-of English accent.

The next film up, Into the Storm, didn’t sound much going in, but won a big “wow” reaction from the audience. A disaster movie about tornados, it had everything - firenados, planenados, but no sharknados.

Perhaps that’s because director Steven Quale was going for “reality” over “Hollywood”. The Hobbit’s Richard Armitage and The Walking Dead’s Sarah Wayne Callies star in the film, which will open September 4.

News_Rich_Media: This trailer is a first look at the film starring Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Arlen Escarpeta, and Jeremy Sumpter, the film will be released in Australian cinemas on September 4 2014.

Other releases on Warner Bros’ 2014 schedule to be teased include young-adult adaptation If I Stay, all-star comedy This is Where I Leave You, Reese Witherspoon’s The Good Lie, comedy sequel Horrible Bosses 2 (in which Jennifer Aniston offered Jason Bateman the chance to pee on her) and The Judge, in which Robert Downey Jr throws off his Iron Man suit to play a slick lawyer (”Innocent people can’t afford me”) who ends up defending his own father (Robert Duvall).

Phew. It’s a slate big enough to suggest Warner Bros will retain the No.1 Hollywood studio crown, after passing the $5 billion gross mark in 2013.

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