Mission: Impossible, Transformers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lead Paramount's 2023 plans

As the final studio presentation of CinemaCon 2023, the pressure was on Paramount Pictures to deliver. Thankfully, it had a secret weapon or two up its collective sleeve, including multiple exclusive trailers not shared outside the room, some news announcements… and 20 minutes of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1, to boot.

Of course, the much-anticipated Tom Cruise vehicle was the big finish of the presentation. Before that, the audience at the movie theater-owner trade show event were treated to appearances from Seth Rogen, promoting the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem — “We thought what if we cast actual teenagers and we capture their insane teenage energy, and that’s what we did,” he explained, adding, “They said a lot of disgusting things we couldn’t use in the movie” — as well as Rihanna, who revealed that she’ll be playing Smurfette in the 2025 animated feature The Smurfs Movie. (She’ll also be providing music for the film, to be directed by Puss in Boots’ Chris Miller.)

Talking of animated features, there was an announcement of the voice cast for Transformers: One, the animated prequel to the Transformers canon due in 2025: Chris Hemsworth will play Optimus Prime, while Brian Tyree Henry will play Megatron, with additional voices including Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Jon Hamm, and Laurence Fishburne. (It’s a big day for Transformers fans, apparently; this morning also saw the release of the new trailer for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, revealing that the villain of the movie is none other than planet-eating menace Unicron.)

Even that wasn’t enough, however; John Krasinski showed up not only to debut the first footage from A Quiet Place: Day One, the prequel to his sci-fi horror series featuring Lupita Nyong’o, but also the first footage from IF, which he described as a “live action Pixar movie” about a girl and her imaginary friends; the voice cast for that feature includes Matt Damon, Jon Stewart, Emily Blunt, Maya Rudolph, Sam Rockwell, Sebastian Maniscalco, Christopher Meloni, Richard Jenkins, Awkwafina and Vince Vaughn, and Steve Carell.

Finally, of course, there was Mission Impossible, with the 20-minute presentation of footage teased with another piece of exclusive footage, a new trailer for the thriller that won’t be shared with the public just yet. That said, we won’t have as long a wait for the finished movie as expected, with Paramount announcing that the movie’s release is shifting forward a couple of days, to July 12. Now, when are we going to see that new trailer…?

Popverse has been keeping up to date with CinemaCon 2023 presentations all week; here are recaps of Sony’s Spider-Man announcements, Warner Bros. Discovery’s DC panel, and Disney’s lack of Marvel news.