The Flash Will Premiere At CinemaCon 2023

Good news for theater owners and film bloggers! "The Flash" will have its first full screening at CinemaCon this April, a full two and a half months before its scheduled June 16 release date.

CinemaCon (previously called ShoWest) is a whirlwind week of movie studios trotting out their big movies and big stars to all the folks that own and operate movie theaters throughout the world. The aim is to make sure the symbiotic relationship between those who make movies and those who put them on their screens remains strong. The studios want to gobble up as many screens as possible for their blockbusters and sometimes prove to theater owners their smaller movies could get butts in seats as well. 

In recent years, CinemaCon has embraced movie blogs as well, which wasn't exactly the case when I first started covering it back in the ShoWest days. As a result, it has this unique tone which is a combination of San Diego Comic-Con style movie geek hype machine and a strictly business, bean-counter businessman convention. 

Usually, CinemaCon is built around the studios doing presentations showing off all their upcoming slates and then they'll run a couple of movies super early. "The Flash" being their first announced movie screening in full bodes very well for the movie and Warner Bros.' faith in it.

You see, the movies that screen in full are usually the ones the studios think will wow the theater owners the most, the ones that will make them see dollar signs as they envision throngs of people buying armloads of concessions and coming back for seconds. 

The fact that the Warners are sending "The Flash" means they know they have a winner on their hands and one that theater owners will want to put on all their biggest screens for as long as possible. "The Flash" has a two-week run before "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" hits screens and this all but guarantees it's going to dominate every big multiplex screen. Sorry, Pixar's "Elemental."

Of course, the movie has to deliver, but word on the street I've been hearing is that Andy Muschietti and his team knocked it out of the park. And I'd bet theater owners will see Michael Keaton's Batman coming back as a huge draw and will hope audiences will fight for seats as they did with "Spider-Man: No Way Home," which also was able to roll in that powerful one-two punch of audience nostalgia and current superhero popularity.

"The Flash" is a pivotal movie for the seismic shift coming to the DC film universe and comes with a lot of baggage, from the declining popularity of the DCEU to its star's problematic behavior off-screen. There are a lot of eyes on this one and it looks like it'll get its first real test on April 25.