AMC Entertainment Executive VP & Chairman Dick Walsh got things under way, but before they could get to the fun stuff, they had to get the formalities out of the way, specifically the word from the luncheon's corporate sponsors Christie Digital Systems, Dolby Laboratories and MySpace.com.

Dick Walsh declared 2006 as the "Year of the Lion" congratulating Lionsgate being one of the only studios to increase their market share for the last 3 years having grossed nearly $350 million to be the #7 studio for the year. (If you consider the relatively lower cost of most of Lionsgate's productions and purchases, this is a HUGE amount.) Of course, that was already after winning the Oscar Best Picture earlier in the year for Paul Haggis' Crash.

Lionsgate President of Domestic Distribution Steve Rothenberg shared a few words about Lionsgate's success in 2006 before handing the floor to John Feltheimer to update exhibitors on "The State of the Gate." Feltheimer talked briefly about some of those plans mainly in regards to the exhibitors, thanking them for their support and discussing other issues. (The theatrical window of how long before a movie goes to DVD has been a much lauded issue at this year's ShoWest.)

Lionsgate President Tom Ortenberg (yes, Lionsgate has two presidents) then ran down some of the releases for 2007 that they didn't have any clips or trailers for to show as well as mentioning a few of their titles for 2008. He reminded exhibitors of how Lionsgate held a similar luncheon three years earlier in 2004 and how their goal back then was to become the preeminent indie studio, something that he and others felt that the company has achieved. He briefly talked Bratz, the live action adaptation of the TV show; the horror remake of The Eye starring Jessica Alba (currently shooting); Thomas Kinkade's The Christmas Cottage, which would be a big holiday release and for 2008, they were working on releasing Tulia which reunites Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton from Monster's Ball; Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged starring Angelina Jolie; Church Boy starring gospel star Kirk Franklin; another Russell Crowe film; Neil (The Illusionist) Burger's The Return with Rachel McAdams and Tim Robbins, and Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married which stars Janet Jackson.

Next up was the ubiquitous awards presentation that accompanied all these luncheons, that being the ShoWest Award of Excellence in Producing, presented to Mark Burg and Oren Koules of Twisted Pictures, co-producers of the Saw franchise. To present the award, they brought out Jigsaw himself, Tobin Bell, who read a heartfelt speech about the duo's efforts at making the franchise happen. As warm as the speech was, it still sounded scary coming from Jigsaw. During their acceptance speech, they mentioned that Bell would be back for Saw IV, which starts shooting on April 16 in Toronto, and for Saw V. (We'll have more on those in our interviews with Bell and Koules.)

Evan Ross, one of the stars of the Lionsgate drama Pride (out March 23), came out to introduce the world premiere of a music video for the film and then Steve Rothenberg introduced "Stone Cold" Steve Austin who introduced a clip for his upcoming action film The Condemned (April 27). The clip involved Austin facing a much bigger opponent and the two fighting by the side of a cliff. The premise involves ten people on an island who are forced to kill each other to be the last one and they all wear ankle bracelets which blow up if they leave the perimeter.

William Friedken, director of The Exorcist and The French Connection came out next and after a bit of eccentric ramblings about the teleprompter, he also praised the theatrical experience and how he's behind the decision to resist smaller windows from theatrical to DVD. They then rolled the trailer for Bug which opens over Memorial Day weekend.

Eli Roth came out and tried to liven things up with jokes about sending a "clean-up crew with every print" to clean up "protein spills" but having very little luck, he went ahead and showed the same clip from Hostel: Part II (June 8) that was at Comic-Con and at Sony's publicity presentation earlier this week. You can see it on the Italian Sony site here though MySpace.com VP Shari Friedman announced that a teaser trailer for the film will debut on the site next Tuesday. (UPDATE: Lionsgate hopes to release an MPAA-approved version of the clip on MySpace, IGN and RottenTomatoes on Tuesday since the version shown here and at Comic-Con wasn't approved.)

Tom Ortenberg returned to talk about the Lionsgate's summer comedy Good Luck Chuck (August 24) starring Dane Cook and Jessica Alba, which he said would be their Wedding Crashers or 40-Year-Old Virgin. They showed a prerecorded video of Jessica Alba, taken from the New Mexico set of The Eye, where she presented the ShoWest Breakout Performance of the Year to Dane Cook. Wearing a sharp grey three-piece suit, it took a couple minutes for the audience to recognize Cook when he came out and he made a few jokes about the smoke machines making "Dick Walsh look like Ace Frehley," and joking that Alba looked high in the video, and then thanked ShoWest for the award, saying that he's glad to be fulfilling his dream, following in the footsteps of his idols Steve Martin, Adam Sandler and Steve Carell.

After his acceptance speech, Cook introduced the trailer for Good Luck Chuck, which he said continues his attempt to make movies with "big laughs and a lot of heart." The trailer was received very well and got lots of laughter from the audience for a number of scenes. I don't remember too many specifics but it involves Dane Cook being this ridiculously lucky guy who sleeps with dozens of women until he meets Jessica Alba's character who is extremely unlucky. And before you say, "Didn't we just see this in Lindsay Lohan's flop Just My Luck?" this looks a lot raunchier and funnier than anything possibly since 40-Year-Old Virgin. (Dan Fogler steals the trailer with his line later in the trailer, though it looks like this movie will now come out before his debut film Balls of Fury.)

Next up was Jason Statham, who starred in Lionsgate's sleeper hit Crank and who would be returning to face Jet Li in War (formerly called Rogue) and he introduced the debut of the trailer for the film which has Statham playing an FBI agent who gets into a battle of wits and skills with an assassin played by Li. The trailer set-up the story and featured some kick ass action choreography by Corey Yuen.

Director James Mangold (Walk the Line) and his wife/producer Cathy Konrad were brought out to introduce an extended clip for their Western 3:10 to Yuma starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, which Ortenberg considers a "sure fire awards contender" for Lionsgate. Mangold mentioned how they had had as much trouble finding a studio for 3:10 as he did with Walk the Line and that bringing the clip of the latter to ShoWest two years earlier had helped Fox understand what they had. Mangold said how he knew that the movie would have appeal to people outside of New York and L.A. and he feels that 3:10 would be the same.

The clip shown looked great, involving Crowe and Bale holed up in a hotel room with the sheriff who plans on taking them to be hanged and men on horses down on the street. When one of the men puts a $200 bounty on the heads of the sheriff's captives, they get a lot of takers and the sherriff and his men desert their prisoners only to be shot down. It looks like Mangold really has made a classic old-school Western in the vein of High Noon, and it'll probably go over well with fans of HBO's Deadwood.

But everything else shown at the luncheon seemed to be merely set-up for Larry the Cable Guy to come out and do what must have been 15 minutes or more of his stand-up routine, rambling 50 jokes or more a minute on everything from fatherhood, Hot Pockets, Wal-Mart, Hugh Hefner (comparing him with his girlfriends looking like "Weekend at Bernie's 3"), Rosie O'Donnell ("if she keeps getting fatter she's going to block The View"), and even a couple jokes at the expense of his fellow Lionsgate comic star Dane Cook ("he gets Jessica Alba crotch shots and I got Bill Lengvall." (He even channeled a bit of Monty Python if you can believe it.)

Regardless, he got the crowd laughing harder than any of the bad jokes from studio execs or NATO reps at the conference so far, before showing a clip from Delta Farce of him and Bill Lengvall being berated by the always great Keith David. (I'd like to say that the clip got a lot of laughs after Larry's build-up but it wasn't received as warmly as the comedy routine beforehand.)

Before the presentation, ComingSoon.net spent a couple minutes talking with Tobin Bell, Steve Austin, Jason Statham, Eli Roth, director William Friedkin and Saw producer Oren Koules that we'll post very soon. (Thanks to Todd Nickels, Kate Hubin and everyone at Lionsgate for helping to arrange these.)