When the actors strike was called earlier this month, many industry eyes turned to the fall festival season and how SAG-AFTRA’s strict rules when it comes to film publicity might limit their star-power.
With the Venice Film Festival being the first major event on the calendar, would the Lido — typically awash with A-list names each year and where the screams for Timothée Chalamet and Harry Styles from the 2022 festival have only just died down — see a noticeable-reduced red carpet?
For all the worry that the actual lineup of the festival — which has become arguably one of Hollywood’s most important awards season launchpads — would be impacted, Tuesday’s program announcement instantly put that to bed.
While Challengers, the R-rated Luca Guadagnino drama starring Zendaya, was last week revealed to have been pushed from its Venice opening night slot as Warner Bros. shifted its release date to 2024 to avoid the strike, festival director Alberto Barbera said in his opening speech that it was the “only movie we have lost.” He then proceeded to reel off a list of star-studded features from some of the best directors working today that will be screening, just the sort of enviable lineup that the festival has become renowned for.
Among the movies getting their world premieres on the Lido in and out of competition are David Fincher’s The Killer starring Michael Fassbender; Bradley Cooper’s sophomore film as director, Maestro, in which he stars as Leonard Bernstein alongside Carey Mulligan, Poor Things from Venice favorite Yorgos Lanthimos, which stars Emma Stone alongside Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael and Margaret Qualley; Priscilla from Sofia Coppola featuring Jacob Elordi as Elvis Presley; the short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, directed by from Wes Anderson with Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Dev Patel and Ralph Fiennes; and Ferrari, Michael Mann’s hotly-anticipated racing biopic Ferrari, starring Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley and Penélope Cruz.
The list continued: Ava DuVerny’s Origin, starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Connie Nielsen and Jon Bernthal, Michel Franco’s Memory featuring Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, and In The Land of Saints and Sinners starring Liam Neeson and Kerry Condon.
So the star power is not lacking, but the question remains: Given the strike, which talent will actually be allowed to attend?
The Hollywood Reporter has already heard of one major title in the main competition that, if the strike is still ongoing come the Venice, will premiere without its cast in attendance. There will probably be several more. For example, Netflix, for which Venice has become a major springboard, this year is bringing The Killer, Maestro, The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar, Pablo Larraín’s El Conde and festival closer Society of the Snow. While the latter two — a Chilean and Spanish feature — are unlikely to be impacted by the strike, the SAG-heavy cast of the first three films means their Venice premieres could be actor-less if the labor dispute continues through the end of August. Poor Things, backed by Searchlight, faces a similar problem.
In his opening address, Barbera noted that SAG-AFTRA strikes will mean some “actors and actresses” will not attend, but asserted that talent from independent films will be able to come, meaning that the red carpet “will not be empty.”
Thankfully, that still leaves plenty of room to keep the paparazzi happy, with titles that would hopefully be able to showcase their non-AMPTP credentials including Priscilla (backed by A24 and The Apartment), Ferrari, Finally Dawn, starring Lily James and Willem Dafoe, Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, starring Glen Powell, French sci-fi The Beast starring George MacKay and Lea Seydoux, and Luc Besson’s directorial comeback Dogman, starring Caleb Landry Jones.
THR hears that waiver applications are already in the process of being sent to SAG-AFTRA for some of these titles, although no approvals have been formally announced as yet.
That all being said, there still remains one issue that could hamper Venice’s red carpet, union waiver or not, should the strike still be going on.
Says one publicist: “There’s also the question of whether the actors would want to do PR in Venice or show solidarity for their striking peers.”
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