AMID LAYOFFS, DISNEY TOUTS UPCOMING FILM SLATE AT CINEMACON

Amid a week of massive layoffs at Disney, the leadership team of its film arm gathered in Las Vegas on Wednesday to tout its successes and upcoming slate of films to a crowd of theater owners and exhibitors.

The Walt Disney Company presentation, with exclusive new footage from films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Elemental,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” and “The Little Mermaid,” is part of the CinemaCon convention. At the weeklong trade conference, major Hollywood studios put on splashy presentations to assure the people who play their movies, from the biggest chains like AMC to single-screen independent theaters, that they have the content to keep audiences buying movie tickets.

Alan Bergman, the co-chair of Disney Entertainment, took the stage inside the Colosseum theater at Caesars Palace first.

“I wanted to come and personally thank you for your support,” Bergman said. “I know how difficult it’s been over the past few years and its great that the business is finally coming back.”

Disney has been the top-grossing studio globally every year since 2016. Last year the company released four of the 10 top-grossing movies domestically. Those four movies — “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” — accounted for 27% of the domestic box office share. Globally, “Avatar: The Way of Water” grossed over $2.3 billion to become the third most successful film of all time.