No surprise here. Variety is reporting that Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie à Deux,” a $200 million R-rated movie musical, will premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September. The first film won The Golden Lion in 2019, the highest prize given at the festival, and so it was a given that the sequel would debut at Venice. Variety is saying that it’s a “shoo-in” for competition.
The rest of the piece mentions titles, set for Venice, that I had already spitballed a few days ago: Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” Pablo Larrain’s “Queer,” Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here,” Julian Schnabel’s “In the Hands of Dante,” Ron Howard’s “Eden,” and Jon Watts’ “Wolfs.”
It should be mentioned that Steve McQueen’s much-anticipated “Blitz” is NOT mentioned here. I had been hearing that Apple is still weighing in on where to debut McQueen’s latest, and that they might actually skip Venice. This would be a huge loss for Venice boss Alberto Barbera.
Paul Greengrass’ "The Uprising," starring Andrew Garfield, opened to $3.2M from 2,068 theaters this weekend. Yikes. The budget hasn’t been disclosed, but is said to be in the $20-$30M range.