Cannes Film Festival Talking Points: AI To Academy Rules & Market Buzz

The 79th Cannes Film Festival gets underway today with plenty of talking points in both the festival and market. Check out our talking points and notes to date below.

Market Movers

There’s no shortage of volume, that’s for sure. Among the bigger-budget items are a handful of intriguing packages. First up is Park-Chan Wook’s starry The Brigands Of Rattlecreek. Apparently being budgeted in the $70M range, the buzzy project has attracted Matthew McConaughey, Pedro Pascal and Austin Butler and has been flirted with by studios over the years. There’s still a shot it could go down that route. The issue for some is the darkness of the violence and the western genre. Jason Statham’s Bourne style action pic John Doe is said to include a nice twist and is in the $80M range. The action staple is expected on the Riviera to meet buyers. Will Amazon bite as they often do on Black Bear titles? Gerard Butler action pic The Nest is another bigger-canvas action prospect with a fun World Cup theme.

Lionsgate comes with the Blair Witch reboot but also their anticipated sequel to box office hit The Housemaid. We hear the sequel is being ambitiously pegged in the $80M range, which is around double the budget of the first one. As we reported yesterday, Florence Pugh is set to star in one of Studiocanal’s biggest projects in a while — probably since Paddington In Peru. The Midnight Library comes with a budget in the $70-80M range, we’re hearing. There’s already good interest from buyers, we hear. This was a popular book and the project’s director, Garth Davis of Lion fame, will be in town for a buyer event. At a packed buyer presentation FilmNation showed footage of their upcoming slate. Plenty to enjoy, including husband and wife Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem on screen as a troubled married couple in Bunker. As it was at CinemaCon, I Play Rocky was a knockout. This one could do real well. There’s often rumor of one or two more splashy late additions to the fray but that’s tbc. Hopes are often high at this stage of a market. Let’s see.

AI, Eh

For those with an ongoing aversion to AI, look away from the Cannes market, which is awash with the subject this year. While Thierry Frémaux yesterday sounded a note of caution about the tech at his meet the press event, the market program features dozens of panels on the tech, there are a bunch of AI-oriented companies being announced and there are multiple films in the market leaning into AI, including Open-AI produced family film Critterz, Doug Liman’s Bitcoin movie with Casey Affleck, Gal Gadot and Pete Davidson, and Roger Avery’s ambitious Paradise Lost. It’ll be interesting to see how the market responds to those projects. The Bitcoin movie is in post already and features a number of household names. Will audiences care about the AI of it all? Interesting test case. The industry has dabbled in all kinds of tech innovation over the years, some lasting longer than others. Will AI make itself indispensable to movie making or will we have moved on to the next big thing in a few years? With market budgets coming down and the independent landscape clawing for any advantage it can get, smart money is probably on the former. From recollection, the Cannes Competition lineup has yet to welcome an AI-produced movie to its ranks, but you wouldn’t bet against it in coming years.

Festival Fancy

What to make of this year’s Cannes Film Festival lineup? The proof is always in the pudding, but the lack of studio debuts certainly hasn’t helped the event’s cause and has been much raked over by media and industry watches. Cannes chief Frémaux said this week he’s hopeful the studios will return next year. However, there’s always plenty to get one’s teeth into and there are plenty of movies that could begin their awards roads here. That has been the trend in recent years. Who knew Sentimental Value would be an awards season heavyweight this time last year? Probably not many. Among other festival talking points: will Neon make it a magnificent seven Palme d’Ors in a row? Hope, Fjord, All of a Sudden, Sheep in the Box and Paper Tiger are among their charges this year. Will critics chime with Paper Tiger from critically-polarizing filmmmaker James Gray? We’ve heard good things. Ken Russell’s controversial horror film The Devils is screening at the festival but it’s a new cut — potentially the first ever screened — and there’s some buzz among critics about the emergence of a scene called “The Rape of Christ” that could turn up. Keep an eye out for Valeska Grisebach’s late festival player The Dreamed Adventure. We hear good things. And it was an interesting touch by the festival to feature Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis on their poster, which is plastered all over town. Fest head Frémaux denied this to be “feminist washing” due to the lack of women with movies at the festival. Was it the festival making a subtle dig at Sarandon’s “blacklisting” from the Hollywood industry over her political views? Meanwhile, get yourself comfortable for some long-running movies (who wants that!): six of the Competition films are 2 1/2 hours +. Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s All Of A Sudden takes the crown at 3 hours 16 minutes.

Rule Change!

The Palme d’Or has been given extra clout from this year following a recent Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) ruling that any non-English language winner will automatically be eligible for the Best International Feature Film category in the Academy Awards. The move is a part of game-changing shake-up of AMPAS’s  eligibility rules announced just prior to Cannes. Previously, the only route into the category for a film was to be submitted by a country’s Academy approved selection committee. Cannes is among six festivals the top prize of which now gives Oscar eligibility alongside Berlin, Busan, Sundance, Toronto or Venice. The opening up of the submission process for the category has been largely applauded by the international film community, especially dissident filmmakers at odds with their governments who never stood a stand chance of representing their countries. Veteran film PR, AMPAS voter and executive director at Premier Jonathan Rutter is also among those welcoming the update saying it will avoid situations like that of last year when Iranian director Jafer Panahi ended up running for France. He also suggests it could allow countries to submit more than one film. “I’ve always felt that it’s wrong for countries that produce lots of high-profile films, such as France, Spain, Brazil, Japan and South Korea, to be put on par with the likes of Chad, Malta, where at best there is one suitable submission,” he says. Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle told Deadline that the festival had only been informed of the change shortly ahead of its official announcement. “From our perspective, the change reflects the increasingly international nature of film culture and the important role festivals play in elevating films and filmmakers that may not always travel easily through traditional commercial or institutional routes. Anything that helps exceptional international films gain greater visibility and reach wider audiences is good for cinema culture,” she said. Not everyone is happy. San Sebastian’s outgoing festival director José Luis Rebordinos told Deadline he planned to talk to the Academy to get his festival added to the list. “We understand that the Academy has already selected the three most important European film festivals, but there is no festival on its list that represents Latin American cinema in the same way that Busan represents Asian cinema. We believe that San Sebastián could be the one.” Rutter suggests Zurich, for which is company does the festival PR, should also be added to the list, and that is also lacking a festival focused on North Africa and Middle Eastern films. The danger is that the new rule cements festival tiering to an even greater extent and creates more of a have and have nots landscape. Back in Cannes, Thierry Frémaux voiced his approval at his traditional pre-festival press conference on Monday. On suggestions that the development could sway the jury’s decision towards films by dissident directors, he said he felt it was unlikely.

Global Turmoil

Cannes is unfolding against the backdrop of one of the world’s most geopolitically tense moments in recent decades, amid the Iran-US war, Israel’s military action in Lebanon and Gaza as well as the Russia-Ukraine war. Some have suggested this may be part of the reason for the unusually small number of movies from the Middle East and North Africa in this year’s lineup. However, travel disruption, rising airfares and security fears do not appear to have dampened the international film community’s appetite for attending Cannes for now. Figures released by the Marché du Film on the eve of its official kick off on Wednesday revealed 40,000 professionals were expected overall at the festival with 16,000 participants from 140 countries registered for the market. Surprisingly, Asia, which faces travel headaches linked to the disruption of Gulf airport hubs, is out of in force led by Japan, which is the focus of this year. Gulf territories such as the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have borne the brunt of Iran’s retaliatory strikes but are pushing on with plans to expand to place in the international film business. Delegations from all three countries are the festival this year. Qatar’s Doha Film Festival has canceled its traditional party but its execs will be here while the Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival bash at the Carlton is going as planned.

Zac Ntim contributed to this report.