A firehose of fall festival lineups unleashed this week, including big titles out of Toronto, the complete Venice slate, and first trickles of titles set to premiere in New York.
“Screen Talk” podcast cohort Anne Thompson is on a well-deserved break this week, and so co-host Ryan Lattanzio is joined by special guest Kate Erbland, IndieWire’s Editorial Director. For this week’s episode, Kate and Ryan parse the lineups and read the tea leaves on what might pop on the September circuit as the Oscar conversation uncorks. And how what’s labeled a premiere (or not), as festivals reveal their plans, can tell us what will premiere at Telluride over Labor Day weekend.
For one, New York Film Festival opening night selection “Nickel Boys,” directed by Oscar nominee RaMell Ross (“Hale County This Morning, This Evening”), was not deemed a world premiere. It didn’t show up at Venice or TIFF (so far), which means we should expect to see the film premiere at Telluride. The Colson Whitehead adaptation about two Black teens in a Jim Crow-era Florida stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.
Closing the New York Film Festival is Steve McQueen’s World War II epic “Blitz,” starring Saoirse Ronan. That film was already announced to open London as a world premiere on October 9, so we won’t be seeing the “12 Years a Slave” Oscar winner’s latest elsewhere. Another movie we hoped would manifest at Venice — Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic musical “The End,” an aesthetic hairpin turn from the documentary director of “The Act of Killing” and starring Tilda Swinton — is deemed a “Canadian premiere” at TIFF. That means it will world premiere at Telluride.
As for other festival bows we’ve got our eyes on, there’s Jon Watts’ star-packed “Wolfs” out of competition at Venice, where Brad Pitt and George Clooney are expected to attend. And adding a red carpet twist: Angelina Jolie will also be at Venice, as she stars in Pablo Larraín’s Maria Callas biopic “Maria.” Her directorial effort, “Without Blood,” is a sales title as well at TIFF. More on Venice snubs and surprises from IndieWire’s Awards Editor Marcus Jones here.
Elsewhere on this week’s episode, Kate Erbland offers reserved praise for Shawn Levy’s Marvel shot-in-the-arm “Deadpool & Wolverine.” And we look at why Lee Isaac Chung’s sensational disaster epic “Twisters” overperformed at the box office last weekend.
Watch the full episode above or listen to it below.
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