Glimpse of Pixar's 'Inside Out' among the highlights at Disney CinemaCon preview

For this viewer, the brightest news of Disney's morning preview presentation at CinemaCon was a clear signal that Pixar is back in brilliant form after the disappointments of Cars 2, Monsters University and even the Oscar-winning Brave. Executive VP of theatrical distribution Dave Hollis showed a sequence from Inside Out, the label's 2015 release directed by Pete Docter of Up fame, and the concept is an inspired true original. Much of the film takes place inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl, with characters named Fear, Sadness, Joy, Disgust and Anger representing her ever-shifting emotions. (They're voiced, respectively, by Bill Hader, Phyllis Smith of "The Office," Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling and Lewis Black.) The hilarious segment shown to CinemaCon attendees not only features those characters, but the folks inside the brains of her parents too. Young Riley's family has just moved cross-country, which has put her in a foul mood, and the dynamics of a typical parent-child spat over the dinner table are ingeniously dissected through the interactions of these brain avatars. Despite this, ahem, heady premise, the audience at Caesars Palace immediately grasped the idea and responded with warm and hearty laughter. Damn you, Pixar, for making us wait till 2015 for this one.

With Captain America: The Winter Soldier already getting great advance word, Disney has yet another very promising Marvel movie on tap for August 1: Guardians of the Galaxy. The Marvel blockbusters have always maintained a sense of humor even when the fate of the world is at stake, but this one ups the irreverence factor with its motley quintet of rule-breaking, outcast superheroes. While the Avengers' circle of larger-than-life warriors looks to spin off into the next decade, this new addition to the Marvel movie universe may bring a second set of sequels and spinoffs. It's a tantalizingly different side of Marvel, led by comic actor Chris Pratt (CinemaCon Breakthrough Performer of the Year and the voiceover star of The Lego Movie).

Those looking for details on the seventh Star Wars film were left in the dark; as Disney chairman said in the voice of Yoda, "Patience you must have." Neither did the studio show any footage from its Christmas Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods, which stars Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, Chris Pine, Emily Blunt and Anna Kendrick as familiar faces in what Hollis called "the Avengers of fairytales." But an extended look at Cinderella revealed a lavish, stylish and straightforward live-action retelling of the tale that's already a Disney animation classic.

The lone celebrity on hand was Jon Hamm, in Las Vegas to introduce a screening of his first starring vehicle, Million Dollar Arm, and to collect a CinemaCon "Excellence in Acting" Award. ("Thanks for not nominating Bryan Cranston," he joked about his eternal Emmy losses.) This very heartwarming comedy-drama is based on the true story of a sports agent who traveled to India to find and train cricket players to become Major League Baseball pitchers; The Scout meets Slumdog Millionaire was probably the logline. Horn reported that the film is "the highest-testing movie I've ever experienced"—even higher than Harry Potter, which he shepherded at Warner Bros. CinemaCon press is under orders not to review the films screened there, but I can say that the movie delivers on many levels, thanks in large part to the craft of screenwriter Tom McCarthy, the writer-director of such excellent, humanistic films as The Station Agent, The Visitor and Win Win.

Sony also previewed its upcoming product on Wednesday afternoon, with no surprise celebrities to excite the crowd. But its lineup of comedies—22 Jump Street, Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel in Sex Tape, Seth Rogen and James Franco assigned to kill Kim Jong-un in The Interview—appears pretty surefire. The supernatural chiller Deliver Us from Evil looks like it could tap that unquenchable thirst for movie horror if marketed well, the new version of the musical Annie seems disarming, and you don't want to mess with Denzel Washington as The Equalizer.

President of worldwide theatrical distribution Rory Bruer introduced 30 minutes of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, including a James Bond-worthy opening sequence with Peter Parker's late father and mother on a doomed plane and one in which Jamie Foxx's Electro ravages Times Square. (What do all these tentpoles have against New York City, anyway?) The 3D looked sensational, and the clips were a robust showcase for the Dolby Atmos immersive sound system installed at the Caesars Palace Colosseum. In the spirit of Disney's perpetual Marvel machine, Sony is planning its own spinoffs of its lone Marvel property, and this latest Spider-Man outing should fuel that long-range plan.

—Kevin Lally