At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford and Scarlett Johansson hit the red carpet to premiere their latest big movies. But Hollywood may have a much lighter presence at the 2024 edition of one of the world’s most notable film festivals.
The culprit is the combination of last year’s actors and writers strikes, which created production delays, as well as a tough economy that’s leading studios to tighten the purse-strings. But there will still be stars on the Croisette, in addition to “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig, who will be presiding over the jury.
Based on intelligence from industry insiders on both sides of the Atlantic, the upcoming edition will have a larger emphasis on European auteurs, along the lines of Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” and Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” which were each nominated for five Oscars.
While the deadline to register feature-length films for Cannes’ Official Selection is coming up on Friday, a number of films have yet to screen for Cannes’ selection committee ahead of the press conference which will take place on April 11 in Paris. Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux already made a trip to L.A. in January and is returning at the end of the week for the Oscars, hoping to secure a few more high profile titles while in Hollywood.
While very few movies have been formally invited by the festival, Variety has confirmed some of the highest-profile European films and independent movies are being submitted for Cannes 2024, including Jacques Audiard’s musical melodrama “Emilia Perez” starring Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez; Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Limonov, The Ballad of Eddie” starring Ben Whishaw; Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump movie “The Apprentice” starring Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong; Paolo Sorrentino’s untitled film with Gary Oldman; David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds” starring Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger; Audrey Diwan’s “Emmanuelle” starring Noemie Merlant and Noemie Watts; Gilles Lellouche’s “L’Amour Ouf” starring Adele Exarchopoulos and Francois Civil; and Nabil Ayouch’s “Everybody Loves Touda.” With the exception of Diwan, whose previous film “Happening” premiered at Venice (and won the Golden Lion) and Sorrentino, whose Netflix film “Hand of God” played at Venice, the other directors all saw their last films premiere in Cannes.
Cannes is also eyeing Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness,” the helmer’s mysterious follow-up to “Poor Things,” which reunites him with Emma Stone and distributor Searchlight Pictures; Andrea Arnold’s “Bird” starring Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, and Francis Ford Coppola‘s self-produced epic “Megalopolis” with Adam Driver and Forest Whitaker. That would mark a big return for Coppola, who debuted his 1979 masterpiece “Apocalypse Now” 45 years ago in Cannes (It’s where he famously declared: “”We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane…My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam”). Quote-hungry journalists are salivating at the prospect of a Coppola press conference for “Megalopolis.”
Longer shots include Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” which Cannes officials still want to see, according to insiders. Some of the anticipated movies which will not play at Cannes include Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” from AppleTV+ (it won’t be completed on time) and Sam Taylor-Johnson’s “Back to Black,” the Amy Winehouse biopic. Studiocanal will release those two in the U.K. and France on April 12 and 24, respectively.
So far, the only blockbuster-sized U.S. title in the pipeline for Cannes is George Miller‘s “Furiosa,” which Warner Bros. will release internationally on May 22. That’s no surprise since “Mad Max: Fury Road” kicked off its run at the 2015 festival. Unlike last year, when Cannes and Venice battled for the right to debut Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” (Cannes prevailed), we haven’t heard of a similar duel over a movie, and Netflix is still not expected to make a comeback on the Croisette — at least not until Cannes allows streaming movies to debut in competition. The 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will take place May 14-25.
Alex Ritman, Nick Vivarelli and Brent Lang contributed to this report.
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