At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford, and Scarlett Johansson hit the red carpet to showcase their latest big films. But Hollywood may have a much lighter presence at the 2024 edition of one of the world’s most prominent film festivals.
The reason is a combination of actors and writers’ strikes last year, which delayed production, as well as a difficult economy that prompted studios to tighten financial constraints. But there will still be stars in “The Croisette,” in addition to “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig, who will chair the jury.
Based on intelligence from industry insiders on both sides of the Atlantic, the next edition will focus more on European authors, similar to Justin Treat’s Anatomy of a Fall and Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest, both of which were their respective titles. Nominated for five Oscars.
While the deadline for feature films to participate in Cannes’ official selection approaches on Friday, a number of films have yet to be screened before the Cannes selection committee ahead of the April 11 press conference in Paris. Cannes president Thierry Frémaux already made a trip to Los Angeles in January and will return this weekend for the Oscars, hoping to pick up a few notable honors while he’s in Hollywood.
While very few films are officially invited by the festival, diverse She confirmed that some of the most prominent European and independent films will be submitted to Cannes 2024, including Jacques Audiard’s musical melodrama “Emilia Perez” starring Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez; Kirill Serebrennikov “Limonov, The Ballad of Eddie” starring Ben Whishaw; Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump film “The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong; Paolo Sorrentino’s untitled film with Gary Oldman; “The Shrouds,” directed by David Cronenberg and starring Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger; “Emmanuelle,” directed by Audrey Dewan, starring Noémie Merlant and Noémie Watts; “L’Amour Ouf” by Gilles Lelouch starring Adele Exarchopoulos and François Civil; And “Everyone Loves Touda” by Nabil Ayouch. With the exception of Diwan, whose previous film Happening premiered in Venice (and won a Golden Lion), and Sorrentino, whose Netflix film The Hand of God premiered in Venice, the other directors have all seen their recent films premiere in Cannes.
Cannes is also eyeing Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness, the director’s mystery 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. This would represent a huge return for Coppola, who premiered his 1979 masterpiece Apocalypse Now 45 years ago at Cannes (where he famously declared: “We had access to a lot of money, a lot of equipment, and something Little by little we went there.” Crazy…my film is not about Vietnam, it is He is Vietnam.” Quote-hungry journalists are salivating at the prospect of a Coppola press conference about “Megalopolis.”
Longer shots include Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” which Cannes officials still want to see, according to insiders. Some expected films that will not be shown at Cannes include AppleTV+’s Steve McQueen’s Blitz (it will not be completed in time) and Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back to Black, the Amy Winehouse biopic. Studiocanal will release these two films in the UK and France on April 12 and 24 respectively.
So far, the only major American blockbuster in the pipeline at Cannes is George Miller’s “Furiosa,” which Warner Bros. is set to release. Internationally on May 22nd. This is not surprising since “Mad Max: Fury Road” premiered at Cannes. Festival 2015. Unlike last year, when Cannes and Venice fought for the right to premiere Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” (Cannes prevailed), we have not heard of a similar duel over a film, and it is still not expected that Netflix is making a new movie. Back to the Croisette — at least not until Cannes allows streaming films to premiere in competition. The 77th Cannes Film Festival will be held from May 14 to 25.
Alex Reitman, Nick Vivarelli and Brent Lange contributed to this report.