There’s a tentpole-sized hole in the middle of this year’s Cannes lineup. For the first time since 2017, not a single film from a major Hollywood studio will be screened at the festival.
There will be two American films – the musical fantasy of Ira Sachs The man I loveWith Rami Malek and James Gray paper tigerwith Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver and Miles Teller, compete — but these are Indians. Neon is released paper tiger United States, and The man I love Still looking for local distribution.
What we’re missing this year are blockbusters, like Paramount Top Gun: Maverickor Mission: Impossible – The Final ReckoningWarner Brothers. Facebookor Disney Indiana Jones and the Connection of Destinythe studio’s previous films that used their Cannes premiere as a springboard for their global release.
“The United States will be present [at this year’s festival]And the studios are less [so]said Thierry Frémaux, Cannes Artistic Director, while announcing the lineup on April 8. He ended on a defiant (and defensive) note: “When the studios are less present in Cannes, they are less present, full stop.”
Cannes tried to fill the studio gap this year with a midnight screening of the film The fast and the furiousthe original race car that started Universal’s Unstoppable Series in 2001. fast Stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster will attend the show on Wednesday night, along with producer Neal H. Moretz and Meadow Walker, daughter of the late Paul Walker. And elsewhere there is a Pan’s maze An anniversary screening that will bring beloved director Guillermo del Toro to the festival.
The Cannes Studios sales pitch is simple: we’ll give you the combination of artistic credibility, media hype and the world’s most glamorous red carpet. And because international film journalists are here, the Cannes premiere could double as an international film event. But the costs are great. For a major release, the cost of travel, accommodation and security for top talent in this expensive Mediterranean resort city can reach seven figures. At a time when the US entertainment industry is still going through a period of contraction, with another major merger still on the horizon, Cannes is an item that can easily be dispensed with.
“It’s very expensive, and if you show it to thousands of journalists and the film doesn’t play well, you’re off to the worst possible start,” says one veteran publicist who handled studio films at last Cannes, and it might have been better to get out of a major European city and show block reviews in opening week.
Insiders point to a 2023 Cannes debut Indiana Jones and the Connection of Destiny As a prime example of what can happen when a big studio movie leans on the Croisette. The film, the first Indiana Jones film to hit the big screen in 15 years, had its world premiere at Cannes, where it was greeted with less than stellar reviews by the international press. A few years later, going to Cannes and the mediocre reaction that followed is seen as a mistake in the marketing plan for this film. Indiana Jones and the Connection of Destiny It topped the global box office with just $384 million against a pre-marketing production budget of $295 million.
It’s not just Cannes. Studios are increasingly wary of the idea of a major festival premiere, where fickle critics, not in-house marketing teams, provide first impressions of a film, often months before it hits theaters. “There is a tension about reviews coming out long in advance, and about controlling the way films of this size are released because there is so much at stake,” Berlin Film Festival director Tricia Tuttle said. THR Ahead of this year’s studio-free Berlin festival. Tuttle traces this trend back to the launch of the Venice Film Festival in 2024 Joker: Folie à Deux – Follow Todd Phillips’s joker — which was quickly trashed by the festival’s detractors and declared dead on arrival, resulting in a meager $200 million worldwide against a total budget of $300 million.
“The speed of response in the age of social media has changed things,” says Cameron Bailey, director of the Toronto Film Festival, noting that bad reviews from major festivals quickly go viral. He says the appeal of a public festival like Toronto, compared to an industry event like Cannes, lies in its real-world audience: “When a major Hollywood studio or streaming operator brings a film to Toronto, it’s because they are confident that the film will resonate with audiences here, first and foremost.” Case in point: Chloe Zhao Hamnetfrom Focus, whose awards campaign got a major boost after winning the Audience Award in Toronto and proving to be an early favorite among the industry at the Telluride Film Festival.
For big studio releases, a Cannes premiere is only useful if the film is scheduled to hit theaters a week or two later. This was the case for 2022 Top Gun: Maverickwhich premiered at Cannes on May 18 before being released worldwide nine days later, on May 27. But by this time, Maverick It had already shown to rave reviews from industry critics (it held a surprise screening for theater owners at CinemaCon in April of that year) and the press (it had its world premiere in San Diego in early May). If anything, the Cannes event, which included a French Air Force flyover, was a triumph for the film, which has already garnered a month’s worth of goodwill and rave reviews.
Looking at this year’s release calendar, very few studio films come close enough to Cannes to make a meaningful festival premiere into a larger publicity tour. Steven Spielberg Disclosure day It will be shown weeks after the Cannes Film Festival closes, on June 12. There are other columns worthy of display at Cannes later. Disney is highly anticipated Toy Story 5 Released on June 17; Christopher Nolan Odysseyfrom Universal, hits theaters July 17 (Nolan, however, prefers to skip festivals); And the warners diggerwritten by Alejandro G. Iñárritu and starring Tom Cruise, will be released on October 1.
A24, the indie studio with major studio ambitions, also appears to have gotten the memo. This is the first Cannes festival since the 2020 edition that was canceled due to the pandemic that does not screen any films from the company, which is a long-time Croisette regular. Last year, A24 brought several films to Cannes, most notably Ari Aster’s entry into competition Eddingtonheadlined by Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal, was met with a muted reception and continued to underperform at the box office despite warmer reviews in the intervening months. By contrast, Josh Safdie Marty Supreme It bypassed the festival slate entirely, opting to launch the New York Film Festival with less pressure and a tightly controlled rollout, with strong critical support and a social media campaign led by star Timothée Chalamet that helped turn the film into one of A24’s biggest films, with a box office haul of $190 million worldwide.
Even without the promise of a box office boost, Cannes has traditionally been able to redeem its reputation as an awards predictor. For international and independent films, this is still the case. Premiere of Joachim Trier’s Triumphant 2025 Competition Emotional value And Jafar Panahi It was just an accident Films jumped all the way to the Oscars. But success awards for films like Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners (four Oscars) and Paul Thomas Anderson Battle after battle (six of them, including Best Picture), both of which snubbed the festival cycle to go Straight to theaters, teach studios a different lesson. As one European marketing executive noted, “If you have the right film, you can make it soar without a festival.”
As major companies retreat to safer, more controlled launches, Cannes’s center of gravity is returning to its roots — as a showcase for auteurs, risk-takers and the global indie sector that built its reputation long before Hollywood.
“Right now, it feels like the studio system and their theatrical approach is out of sync with festivals,” says Mike Downey, executive producer of 2026 competing titles. Parallel stories From Asghar Farhadi and Ryosuke Hamaguchi suddenly. “But if Cannes moves away a little from Hollywood, it puts the spotlight back on world cinema – and that’s a good thing for that side of the business.”
David Canfield and Lily Ford contributed to this report.
