Expend4bles, John Wick, and The Hunger Games: All the whiplash from Lionsgate’s CinemaCon panel

Lionsgate took center stage this afternoon at CinemaCon in Las Vegas. Taking a cue from the 2019 Video Music Awards, Sebastian Maniscalco hosted the panel, which included big news about John Wick, The Hunger Games, Expendables, and Dirty Dancing.

First up, Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables are back. Or should we call them The Expend4bles because Expendables 4 is coming to theaters this year. And the Expendables are expanding (expandables?). Stallone’s bringing in Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran, Iko Uwais, and 50 Cent to help settle whatever score needs settling. Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lungren, and Jason Statham will also return for the latest action hero spectacular.

Piggybacking off the Expendables news, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is finally getting a movie to call its own. Edge Of Seventeen director Kelly Fremon Craig will helm the film, and Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie will star as Margaret’s parents. The very special story about a young girl and her menstruation will be upsetting misogynists around the country later this year.

“I hope there’s, above all, a feeling of togetherness and community and feeling, as women, like we’re all on the same team,” McAdams told The Hollywood Reporter. “That there’s nothing you can’t talk about with each other. And for men, too. Benny Safdie plays the dad in this and is just so warm, and he’s struggling with what it is to have a girl who’s changing before his very eyes.”

Speaking of teens, ‌Sebastian Maniscalco wrote a movie, About My Father, and it’s coming soon. Maniscalco will play himself opposite Robert De Niro, who plays his father. Uh, let’s just hope that Maniscalco doesn’t tell him that you can milk anything with nipples because De Niro’s just going to tell him that he has nipples. Leslie Bibb and Kim Cattrall will also be there, presumably trying to talk some sense into these two numbskulls. Men!

Jumping back to a loose theme of fourth entries in long-running action series, there’s going to be another John Wick. Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahlenski took the stage to introduce John Wick: Chapter 4. It would appear as though they’ve dropped the subtitle experiment, which is fine because no one has ever said John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum aloud. John Wick: Chapter 4 is “coming soon.”

There were some odds and ends for Lionsgate, too. In a sizzle reel, the studio dropped some more teasers. Eli Roth’s Borderlands starring Cate Blanchette, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jack Black is still making its way to theaters. Ana De Armas leads Ballerina, one of the John Wick spin-offs—thankfully not the one starring Mel Gibson. Jennifer Grey will once again not be put in a corner in a Dirty Dancing legacy sequel called DD. We’re confident that the internet is mature enough to handle a sequel that’s effectively called “Double D.”

And, last but not least, The Hunger Games are back with The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, which we’re hoping won’t be a Crimes Of Grindelwald situation, but we’ll see. The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Song Birds And Snakes will fly and/or slither into theaters on November 17, 2023.