Cannes Announcement Draws Near / One Battle Trailer Drops / Something Else to Keep an Eye On

 CANNES ANNOUNCEMENT DRAWS NEAR

We'll get the bulk of the Cannes lineup for Palme competition as well as Une Certain Regard, Out-of-Competition and Special Screenings on April 10th.  Between now and then, I'll be adding Cannes Guesswork from Variety (today) and then Next Best Picture and World of Reel next week prior to the actual announcement.

For today, I've drawn from Variety's Cannes spec piece published March 14th.  From that piece here are ten Cannes to TFF possibilities:

After the Hunt/Amazon-MGM/Luca Guadagnino

Couture/No Distribution/Alice Winocour

Die, My Love/No Distribution/Lynne Ramsay

Orphan/No Distribution/Laszlo Nemes

The Chronology of Water/No Distribution/Kristen Stewart

The Disappearance of Joseph Mengele/No Distribution/Kirill Serebrennikov

The History of Sound/Mubi/Oliver Hermanus

The Mastermind/Mubi/Kelly Reichardt

The Way of the Wind/No Distribution/Terrence Malick

The Young Mother's Home/No Distribution/The Dardennes Brothers

Variety also unequivocally reports that Yorgos Lanthimos' Bugonia and Julian Schnabel's In the Hands of Dante will not be playing Cannes.

The entire Variety piece is linked here.

ONE BATTLE TRAILER DROPS

So remember a couple of week's ago when Warners moved Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another to a Sept. 26th release date opening the door to a potential selection by Telluride and/or Venice and/or Toronto?  That was followed by small teaser for a forthcoming full trailer.  Then, the full trailer dropped last week.

Here the trailer is from YouTube:

I'm intrigued.

On a related note, there is a good deal of hubbub about wrangling between PTA and Warners over the final cut of the film that may be related to reported test screenings.  

I'm keeping my eyes and ears open.

SOMETHING ELSE TO KEEP AN EYE ON

I'm sure a lot of you saw the news this past week that A24, Barry Jenkins and Zendaya are all on board for a biopic (of a sort) about the life of Ronnie (Bennett) Spector.  That combination is eye catching and could be Telluride material for, say, 2026?

Details are sparse but you can check out these stories from last week about the project:

Deadline.

The Hollywood Reporter.

The Playlist.

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Challengers to Open Venice / Speaking of Venice... / TFF #50 Poster???

CHALLENGERS TO OPEN VENICE

The Venice Film Festival announced last Thursday that Luca Guadagnino's Challengers would be their opening film.  Guadagninio's tennis set love triangle starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor has been sitting on my "maybe" list for TFF #50 for awhile mostly because of Luca's Bones and All and Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams having had appeared as apart of the TFF #49 program.

Now, its selection as the Opening Night film doesn't necessarily preclude it from also playing Telluride.  Heck, I write on here every year about paying attention to when Venice schedules their screenings as films that screen in the first 3-4 days can and often do move on to Telluride.  

However...

There is a winkle here. Venice Openers are not a consistent Telluride play.  It hasn't happened since 2018 when Damien Chazelle's First Man opened Venice and then came to TFF.  As a matter of fact, since I started attending Telluride in 2006, the Venice Opener has only then played Telluride six times:

2018: First Man

2017: Downsizing

2016: La La Land

2014: Birdman

2013: Gravity

2010: Black Swan

Again, all of this doesn't mean that Challengers won't make it to Telluride but it seems like a bit of an uphill struggle at this point.

[This story has been corrected from an earlier version which cited incorrect dates.]

SPEAKING OF VENICE...

Alberto Barbera, the director of the Venice Fest, is set to announce the bulk of their lineup on July 25th.  I checked in with World of reel which has been keeping a running list of possible Venetian titles for possible films that will do a stop in Telluride after making their World Premiere on the Lido.

WOR's latest came down on Friday.  You can see the complete list here.

From this latest speculation, here are my best guesses re: what could make the trip to Colorado:

Lee/Ellen Kuras

Priscilla/Sofia Coppola

Maestro/Bradley Cooper

Poor Things/Yorgos Lanthimos

El Conde/Pablo Larrain

Saltburn/Emerald Fenell

Strangers/Andrew Haigh

Fingernails/Christos Nikou

TFF #50 POSTER???

I wrote on June 26th about the lack of information regarding TFF 2023"S Guest Director(s).  Normally the Guest Director(s) is/are announced in June and, of late, usually the third week of June.  

However, I suspect that the Fest's leadership is following (at least to some extent) the playbook from TFF #40.  Back in 2013, I don't believe the Festival released any Guest Directing info until the lineup was announced the day before the fest began.

So I won't be surprised if that's how TFF plays it this time around.

But the poster...

For most of the years I've been blogging about Telluride the poster announcement was likely to happen in May or early-to-mid June.  That's true for 2009-2016.  We even knew the poster for TFF #40 on May 30th of that year.

Beginning with 2017, the announcement has come in July three of five times.  The exceptions are a way early announcement in 2021 (it came in February).  The other is from 2018 when Woody Pirtle was the artist but I haven't been able to pin down the date that The SHOW made that announcement.

The latest poster announcement I can find was Edwina White's for 2018 that came on July 22nd.

So, ultimately...you have to believe that we're right on the cusp of an announcement.  Maybe?

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