ShowEast Day One: Latin accent

By Kevin Lally

If you've ever wondered what the cast of High School Musical sounds like in Spanish, ShowEast in Orlando, Florida, was the place to be on Monday. The opening International Day programming put the spotlight on Latin America, and executives for the Southern Hemisphere from five major studios showcased trailers and clips from their upcoming movie lineups, with local productions in the mix and select previews dubbed or subtitled in Spanish.

With its foreign-language versions of HSM3 at the ready, Disney could easily tap into the same audience that's made the movie of Mamma Mia! a worldwide hit. The studio also touted its 3D animated Bolt, Adam Sandler in the kids' fantasy Bedtime Stories, the Robert Zemeckis motion-capture version of A Christmas Carol ("It will scare the Dickens out of you"), Dwayne ("The Rock") Johnson continuing to court the family audience in Race to Witch Mountain, and the latest Pixar adventure, Up. And the trailer for The Proposal looks like a high-concept comedy comeback for Sandra Bullock (driven Canadian female exec jumps into marriage plans with a resentful Yank subordinate to get a green card and save her company).

Sony International's Steven O'Dell predicted at least five blockbusters in the studio's near future: Quantum of Solace, Angels & Demons, Terminator Salvation, The Taking of Pelham 123, and Roland Emmerich's apocalyptic 2012. The studio also clearly believes in the potential of Kevin James as Paul Blart: Mall Cop, which they're screening in Orlando on Wednesday.

Fox International showed a lengthy clip from The Day the Earth Stood Still putting Keanu Reeves's spacey aura to good use, and a cute sequence from Ice Age 3 proving this highly successful animated franchise (now joining the 3D onslaught) hasn't lost its comic touch. No visuals from James Cameron's highly anticipated Avatar were offered, but the studio's Eduardo Echeverria promised "it will surely change the theatrical experience forever" and encouraged the crowd to hurry up with their 3D installations.

Paramount International's preview included the highly anticipated Watchmen (which they are handling outside the U.S.), an effective-looking revival of the hoary Friday the 13th franchise, a Spanish-dubbed Monsters vs. Aliens trailer, and a glimpse of Bruno Barreto's Brazilian Last Stop 174, a dramatization of the true hostage incident recounted in the acclaimed documentary Bus 174.

Universal International's Mauricio Duran noted that this was the studio's first $100 million summer in Latin America, and touted a slate including Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards, Pedro Almodovar's Los Abrazos Rotos, Benicio Del Toro as The Wolf Man, and a film I'm eager to see, Henry Selick's stop-motion-animated Coraline. A breakneck sequence from the new Fast and the Furious film, with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker both back behind the wheel, hints that franchise hasn't run out of gas: The tagline is "New Model, Original Parts."

Earlier in the day, FJI's own Bill Mead moderated a seminar on the future of digital cinema in Latin America, and the overall feeling was it isn't particularly bright. Cinemark International president Valmir Fernandes predicted a mere 3-4% market penetration without some kind of virtual print fee arrangement, which is nowhere near reality. Cine Colombia CEO Munir Falah opined that 3D "is not the answer" to driving digital, since he believes the initial novelty of 3D will ebb. Some Latin American theatres are getting 100% funding of their digital installations from sponsors like telcom companies or mall landlords, but overall, there's no central driving force helping d-cinema gain momentum in this part of the world.

Also on the bleak side, a panel of distributors in Latin America lamented that piracy seems to be increasing there, with Fox's Echeverria noting that many countries simply don't have a budget for anti-piracy initiatives. On the bright side, all distribution panelists agreed that business across the region is stable, and even up dramatically in countries like Argentina.

I'll be back tomorrow night with more news from ShowEast...