Minions 2, Billy Eichner’s gay rom-com Bros, Julia Roberts and George Clooney’s Ticket to Paradise & more teased at CinemaCon

After a lengthy pandemic-related delay, Minions: The Rise of Gru is nearly upon us and Steve Carrell took to the stage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas to present a new trailer for the film. Minions: The Rise of Gru takes place in the 1970s when Gru (Carell) is just a 12-year-old boy dreaming of becoming a master of evil, and our own Chris Bumbray said that they’re certainly having a lot of fun with the ’70s setting. Although he did add that there should “probably be a moratorium on the use of the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage in trailers.” Minions: The Rise of Gru will hit theaters on July 1, 2022.

Comedian Jo Koy also introduced Easter Sunday, in which he stars as a fictionalized version of himself. Koy explained that Steven Spielberg actually came up with the idea for the film after watching Koy talking about his family in a stand-up special. Broken Lizard’s Jay Chandrasekhar directed the film, which revolves around Koy gathering his Filipino family together for Easter Weekend, with the classic Ice Cube/Chris Tucker comedy Friday serving as a model. Bumbray said that the footage looked pretty funny (with Tia Carrere getting the chance to show her comedy chops) and looks like a solid, family-friendly flick with a dose of edge thrown in for good measure. Easter Sunday will be released on August 5, 2022.

The presentation then moved on to Bros, which Billy Eichner introduced as “the first gay rom-com produced by a studio, and I’m not talking about that new Buzz Lightyear movie.” Directed by Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and produced by Judd Apatow, Bros is also the first major studio movie in which all the actors in the cast are LGBTQ+, even those playing the cisgender roles. The trailer looked super funny, very similar to Stoller and Apatow’s previous movies, and quite Hard-R. Lots of funny bits examining and celebrating the challenges of dating in the gay world.

We also got a look at Ticket to Paradise, a new romantic comedy starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts as a divorced couple trying to keep their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) from getting married. It looks to be a throwback to Roberts’ classic rom-com’s from the ’90s, and Clooney seems to be having a blast, particularly in a segment where he dances to House of Pain.

Things got a little more serious with She Said, a powerful drama starring Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan as Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the two journalists who exposed the Harvey Weinstein scandal. In the same vein as Spotlight or All the President’s Men, the trailer shown at CinemaCon follows Kantor and Twohey chasing the story and the steps Weinstein took to shut them down. Although Bumbray says it looks very compelling, he wonders if it will connect with a larger audience.

Audiences also got to see an unfinished trailer for Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Having spent eight of his nine lives, Puss (Antonio Banderas) is forced to retire and become a housecat. That obviously doesn’t appeal to him and he teams up with a therapy dog named Perro (Harvey Guillén) and the street-savvy Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) in order to escape from a group of bounty hunters (Goldilocks and the Three Bears).