Cannes Boss Addresses Hollywood Skipping This Year’s Festival

Cannes Film Festival Director Thierry Frémaux was asked at today’s festival presser about Hollywood’s lack of commitment at this year’s fest with big world premieres, and whether Universal’s Fast & Furious 25th anniversary was a make-good.

“I hope the studio films come back,” said Frémaux.

Post Covid, a handful of summer tentpoles fizzled in their Cannes launch with lackluster reviews, and ultimately, poor box office results. Take your pick on what was unveiled too soon: Warner Bros’ Furiosa in 2024, Disney/Lucasfilm’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Pixar’s Elemental in 2023.

In the same breath, there were certainly successes, i.e. Top Gun: Maverick, which was Tom Cruise’s highest grossing film of his career as well as Paramount’s ($1.5B), last year’s Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning ($598.7M) and Warner Bros’ 2022 Elvis ($288.6M) which shot Austin Butler out of a cannon as a leading man, in addition to the pic landing eight Oscar noms.

Frémaux emphasized that “each studio, producer, each author has their own strategy” when it comes to releasing a movie. Read, there were talks originally two years ago for One Battle After Another to premiere at Cannes when the Paul Thomas Anderson directed movie originally had an August 2025 release. When it was pushed to late September, Warners skipped an entire festival launch plan for the ultimate 6x Oscar winning and Best Picture winner.

In regards to those summer tentpoles not premiering this year, Frémaux said, “Well, our rule is to not talk about films that are not in Cannes. We only talk about films in the selection.”

Word was that Universal’s June 12 Steven Spielberg UFO feature, Disclosure Day wouldn’t be ready in time. There was no chance that Disney was going to take Lucasfilm’s Memorial Day opener Star Wars: Mandalorian and Grogu after being burned with Dial of Destiny and Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. When you’re big, you gotta have the goods to play the Grand Theatre Lumiere.

There are other Hollywood insiders who call ‘B.S.’ on the major studios’ excuses for skipping this year: There was product which was indeed ready.

Frémaux said that Universal proposed the Fast & Furious 25th anniversary event for a Midnight Screening with the cast, the fest director saying “we thought it was a wonderful idea.” Coincidentally Wednesday night’s event comes in the wake of franchise star Vin Diesel announcing at the NBCUniversal upfronts that four series are in the works based on the automobile action series.

“Fast and Furious is a phenomenon in contemporary history of cinema,” Frémaux added. Paramount is also holding a 40th anniversary screening of Top Gun at this year’s fest.

The fest director emphasized patience with Hollywood as they continue to reconfigure post Covid, post strikes and in the throes of mergers.

While Hollywood is sitting out, Frémaux pointed out that U.S. cinema is being represented with James Gray’s Paper Tiger, Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love and Steven Soderbergh’s docu John Lennon: The Last Interview to name a few.

So the yanks have no reason to gripe even if there’s no Hollywood on the Croisette.

If you wanna hear complaints on being left out, talk to Italy: They don’t have any titles in this year’s Cannes selection as one of the country’s journalists observed toward the end of today’s press conference.