Hollywood studios are increasingly avoiding world premieres at major festivals like Cannes, with this year marking the first time since 2017 that no major studio film debuted there in eons. A few U.S. titles will still appear in competition, “The Man I Love” and “Paper Tiger,” but they are independent productions without full studio backing.
Why the sudden 180? Tricia Tuttle, director of the Berlin Film Festival, links the current studio pullback from festival premieres to the reception of “Joker: Folie à Deux” at Venice in 2024. In a THR report, “Why Is Hollywood Ghosting Cannes?,” she points to that film’s festival debut as a turning point in how studios think about launching major titles in front of critics and early public reaction.
She specifically frames the issue as one of control and risk, saying there is “a nervousness about reviews coming out long before release and about controlling the way films of that scale are launched because there’s so much at stake.”
The idea is that once a high-profile film screens at a festival, its reputation can solidify immediately—often before a studio can respond or recalibrate marketing.
In that context, “Joker: Folie à Deux” is described as having been “swiftly trashed by festival critics” and effectively declared dead on arrival after its Venice premiere. The original Joker earned $1.1 billion at the box office in 2019 and took home two Oscars, while “Folie à Deux” brought in about $207M globally on a reported $200M budget.
There were several factors behind the sequel’s underperformance, including audience reception and word of mouth, alongside the early negative buzz following Venice that intensified before its theatrical release.
I will however add that this reluctance from major studios to go to festivals might have actually begun a year before “Folie à Deux,” in May 2023 at Cannes, when James Mangold’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had its world premiere, garnering decisively mixed reviews. The post-Cannes reception was slightly more favorable—it currently sits around 70% on Rotten Tomatoes—but not enough to save it from becoming a box-office disappointment.
Taken together, these cases have made studios increasingly wary of festival premieres, and their fear to lose control of the narrative too early. Once a film screens, the first wave of reactions hits fast and tends to stick, especially in the social media era, and that early perception can be hard to undo.