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Creative Pictures Studios

Director's Cut

by Mark Gottlieb, Wei-Hwa Huang (graphic design)
Answer: SOME REEL GLEE AND A LOT OF SOUL

Solvers must fit the emoji into the grid to create a coherent web of famous movies such that each movie starts at a colored arrow, goes through several emoji that represent visual plot elements of the movie (some of them more accurate matches than others), and ends at an arrow with a number in its arrowhead. (Icons meaning "and" and "in" each show up twice on arrows.)

puzzle's diagram filled in with emoji

The movies are, from oldest to newest:

Start
Arrow
Movie TitleEmoji SequenceArrowhead
Number
iii) oldest The Wizard of Oz, 1939 dog → house → tornado → shoe → witch → heart → balloon 12
v) 2nd oldest Miracle on 34th Street, 1947 department store → envelope → Santa Claus 8
x) 3rd oldest Cinderella, 1950 fairy → pumpkin → 12 o’clock → shoe → heart 9
i) 4th oldest Peter Pan, 1953 dog → fairy → island → mermaid → pirate flag → clock <in> crocodile 7
ii) 5th oldest The Little Mermaid, 1989 mermaid → octopus + witch → leg → heart 8
vi) 6th oldest The Nightmare Before Christmas, 1993 jack o’ lantern → Santa Claus → "ghost" (Oogie Boogie) 15
viii) 7th oldest You’ve Got Mail, 1998 books + store → envelope → heart 7
iv) 8th oldest Cast Away, 2000 package → island → volleyball 4
vii) 9th oldest Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, 2006 pirate flag → heart <in> box → "octopus" (Kraken) 33
ix) newest Up, 2009 house → balloon → dog → "peacock" (colorful bird) 1

There are two data streams to extract from the completed grid, one from the emoji and one from the movie titles.

The blank puzzle grid contains numbers in some of the squares. Using those numbers as indexes into the names of the emoji that are placed in those squares and reading the resulting letters in the grid left to right, top to bottom results in "SOME REEL GLEE AND".

Name (Index) Letter
DESERT ISLAND (3) S
VOLLEYBALL (2) O
DEPARTMENT STORE (7) M
MERMAID (2) E
FAIRY (4) R
ENVELOPE (4) E
PACKAGE (7) E
JACK O LANTERN (6) L
LEG (3) G
HIGH HEELED SHOE (8) L
CROCODILE (9) E
HOUSE (5) E
BALLOON (2) A
TORNADO (4) N
DOG (1) D

Each movie plot summary ends with an arrow that contains a number. Using those numbers as indexes into the movie titles, and ordering them by the roman numerals in the arrows (in rough rainbow color order), results in the message "A LOT OF SOUL".

the readout, in graphical form

The final answer for what Creative Pictures Studios needs to work, containing two movie lot puns, is thus: SOME REEL GLEE AND A LOT OF SOUL.