MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin Highlights State of the Industry at 2026 CinemaCon
LAS VEGAS – Motion Picture Association Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin today delivers his annual State of the Industry address at CinemaCon. The following are his remarks as prepared for delivery:
Ladies and gentlemen: it’s always a thrill to be with you at CinemaCon. With my friend, Michael O’Leary, and Cinema United. With the leaders who bring theaters to life.
And in any case, there’s nothing really noteworthy happening in Washington D.C. nowadays. Everything is just great inside the Beltway. So I thought I’d bring some positive D.C. vibes to Vegas for yet another exciting talk on policy.
Every year, being in this room is a reminder of what this business means to so many: A source of jobs. A cornerstone of culture. A space where you can enter a room with friends and strangers, bound solely by common interest in a powerful story.
Our partnership with you honors the impact of this medium worldwide. But we all know that cinema holds a special place in American life.
This July 4th, America turns 250. And for over half that time, movies have played a starring role.
That began in theaters: At the Vitascope, the first storefront theater in New Orleans. At the Edisonia, the world’s first permanent theater in Buffalo. At the Washington Iowa State Theater, the longest-continually running cinema in the U.S.
This is not a subplot in our country’s narrative.
This is a featured theme in our national story.
So when the MPA fights for this industry, at home and abroad, we’re fighting for a larger cause. We’re fighting for American workers and businesses. For ideals of free speech and free expression. For a vision – of film’s capacity to bring us together.
We are fighting for you.
Right now, that fight continues on what I highlighted last year here in Vegas: how to keep U.S. film production strong.
Our campaign is making progress, with growing incentives in New Jersey and California and beyond helping states attract creators to their communities.
But that battle doesn’t end at state lines.
It’s happening in Washington too, and we’re at the center of it all – together with studios, unions, guilds, producers, President Trump’s Hollywood Ambassadors, and more – engaging the White House and Republicans and Democrats in Congress on what would be a true game-changer: a federal film tax incentive.
We are fighting daily to reach that goal. And we will keep fighting to make America a more competitive place to make movies.
At the heart of all our work is a notion that drives the success of our industry:
In a word – trust.
Because in what we know is a tough, uncertain moment right now, for many in this field, maintaining the trust of audiences and artists is critical.
People should be able to trust the content on their screens. And audiences should be able to trust that cinema remains free from censorship.
MPA’s ratings system – that we created together – has existed for nearly 60 years to uphold that charge.
It’s a trusted guide for parents and the public. It’s central to our partnership with you and with Cinema United. And it works.
Look at polling data today and show me another institution with a 91 percent approval rating – one that’s earned similar numbers for decades.
Certainly nobody in politics gets those numbers. But our ratings do.
In fact, they’re so popular that even Instagram tried to make unauthorized use of our PG-13 standards on their teen accounts.
And we understand why. Social media is getting hit left and right by investigations around online safety for kids. They’re looking for ways to reassure families.
But movies and theaters don’t face these challenges. Because our ratings are known, tested, trusted. For decades, they’ve protected us all – studios and cinemas – from the same scrutiny. They ensure parents have the information they need to make the right decisions for their children.
On top of that, digital spaces are flooded with tens of millions of videos each day that are impossible to rate – certainly not the kind of curated film you’d find in your theaters.
So when this issue arose with Instagram in recent months, we went to the mat.
It’s not very often that the MPA takes on a 1.6 trillion-dollar company. But in this case, in defense of our ratings, and your theaters, and the trust we’ve built with families together – we knew it was the right thing to do.
We made it clear: there’s something very distinct about what’s discovered in a theater from what users find online.
And two weeks ago, we achieved our goal: Instagram and Meta agreed to the limits we demanded. Which keeps our ratings focused where they belong – on films you can see on the big screen.
Let there be no doubt: on my watch, no one will confuse movies shown in your theaters with user-generated content people watch on their phones.
We will always fight to defend the integrity of our ratings, no matter the adversary.
We will always fight to preserve the trust we have forged with parents.
We will always fight to protect theaters as trusted places of entertainment for everyone.
People should also be able to trust that what they see on your screens is, at its core, human – created by brilliant storytellers, whose work is strengthened by our belief in innovation.
Let’s never forget: copyright is the lifeblood of the film industry. And preserving it is non-negotiable. It’s so essential to our national character that it’s even inscribed in our Constitution.
But let’s remember something else: Our industry was founded thanks to a radical leap in technology. Innovation is part of our DNA too.
And every time we’ve seen a new advancement in our industry – and we’ve been told that our end is near – we’ve persisted. We’ve adapted. We’ve thrived. We’ve always embraced what technology could do in the hands of creators to bolster the art of storytelling.
Now, we’ve entered the era of AI. None of us should ignore its potential dangers. Nor should we dismiss its possibilities.
We should view it as we do its predecessors: as a tool that can enhance human creativity, not replace it.
We should focus on how to develop and use AI responsibly.
We should see AI the way many already do: as a means to improve the fan experience or enable artists to explore novel formats.
But no matter what, no matter how AI might change the game, we will remain clear about our core principles:
Protecting copyright as the engine of free expression.
Defending intellectual property as the driving force of our creative community.
Now there are some who say we should sweep away copyright – to keep pace with America’s rivals and gain ground in the geopolitical arena.
But that is a false choice.
At our best, what sets our industry, and our country, apart is our fidelity to the rule of law, matched by our openness to change. We can and must do both.
Upholding copyright is an economic necessity too: the core copyright industries contribute over $2 trillion to America’s GDP and provide paychecks to 11.6 million American workers.
So let’s be clear: we will never waver in protecting these foundational rights from any threat. AI will not alter that stance.
And when anyone violates or misuses copyright, we will take them on.
Case in point: you may have caught the rollout of the new text-to-video model known as Seedance 2.0 – launched by a Chinese company – a commercial service that was clearly infringing our studios’ intellectual property to generate videos using characters and stories from our favorite movies.
The moment we saw it, we understood the stakes for all of us.
We recognized that the flood of illegally-created videos featuring copyrighted content would threaten the livelihoods of the entire creative workforce – and keep fans from catching the real thing at your theaters.
The very day these videos appeared online, the MPA made our position plain: this platform was disregarding well-established law – and its infringing activity must cease immediately.
We told them in no uncertain terms:
You cannot steal copyrighted material and get away with it.
You cannot violate the rights of creators, threaten millions of jobs, and undermine cinema as we know it.
We called out this violation right away. We made clear that we would not allow this threat to stand.
And after our swift and bold action, ByteDance took our feedback. They announced plans to implement guardrails on this service.
And as they continue to roll out this platform in different markets, we will hold their feet to the fire to ensure their guardrails are effective and our studios’ intellectual property is protected.
We’ve delivered our message time and again.
When the White House prepared to roll out their national framework on AI last month, we worked hard to ensure it reaffirmed what’s always been true:
Copyright protections and innovation are twin pillars of our nation’s strength – and that must continue to be the case today.
When copyright is under assault anywhere, we act to reaffirm our promise:
We will keep fighting to strengthen the reach of human creativity. To maximize the power of technology for good. To reinforce copyright’s key role in the age of AI.
We will keep fighting to ensure audiences can trust what’s coming soon to a theater near you.
Trust. Creativity. Innovation. All of it is part of a tradition that dates back to America’s founding – and remains vital to America’s future.
In the earliest days of our republic, our second president, John Adams, wrote about the importance of the arts.
He said, “I must study politics and war…” so “that my sons may…study mathematics and philosophy…” so that their children would have “a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture…” and more.
Our founders risked their lives to build a country where their descendants would have the liberty to wonder and create.
A country where this industry is not only possible, but where it’s the fullest expression of our most cherished ideals of freedom.
The United States would exist without the movies. But it wouldn’t be the same. It would be less creative. Less imaginative. Less connected.
Because cinema helps us see perspectives we never thought we’d grasp; travel to places we never thought we’d go; open frontiers we never thought we’d discover; pursue unknown horizons, filled with trademarks of our industry’s strength –and our nation’s spirit – possibility and hope.
As we celebrate America’s 250th birthday, that legacy is our inheritance.
That duty falls to us:
To fight for the rights of every generation to make, watch, and enjoy incredible art.
To be awed and inspired all over again by the enduring power of great stories, well told.
Thank you.
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About The Motion Picture Association:
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) serves as the leading voice and advocate of the motion picture, home video, and television industries. It works in every corner of the globe to advance the creative industry, protect its members’ content across all screens, defend the creative and artistic freedoms of storytellers, and support innovative distribution models that bring an expansion of viewing choices to audiences around the world. Its member studios are: Netflix, Paramount Pictures, Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Studios, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Charles Rivkin is Chairman and CEO.
Media Contact:
Tom Zigo