Tomorrow morning, July 22, at approximately 7 AM PST the first wave of 2014 Toronto Film Festival titles will be announced and I’m having a hard time trying to figure out just what exactly to expect. First of all, we already know David Fincher‘s Gone Girl is premiering at the New York Film Festival as is Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Inherent Vice. So scratch those two off the board. Then there’s Birdman, which will open the Venice Film Festival and close New York and expectation is it will also show up in Telluride, which takes place just before Toronto… will Fox Searchlight go for all three? Or better yet, will they go for the new rules laid down by Toronto Film Festival artistic director Cameron Bailey?
In recent years the Toronto Film Festival has seen films such as Best Picture winners Slumdog Millionaire, Argo and 12 Years a Slave getting “sneak” previews at the Telluride Film Festival before their so-called premieres in Toronto. Other films with similar results include Gravity and Prisoners. Well, that didn’t sit well with Bailey who told Indiewire earlier this year:
“All films playing in the first four days of the festival must be world premiere or North American premieres… ‘World premiere’ means the first public screening of the film anywhere in the world. ‘North American premiere’ means the first public screening anywhere in Canada, the United States or Mexico. Invited films that screen elsewhere in North America prior to their Toronto screening will be scheduled from the Monday of our festival onward. In additional the festival’s Opening Night film must be a world premiere. The closing night film must be a world or international premiere.”
So, studios have to ask themselves, do they want to make sure they are the most talked about films out of Toronto on the first four days or do they simply want to be part of the conversation near the end? Or, gasp, not at all?
As an example, this means if Fox Searchlight wants Birdman to have its North American premiere at TIFF it can’t screen in any capacity at Telluride, a festival that has proven recently to be a great launching point for an Oscar campaign. The big question is, whether that’s because of Telluride or because it puts added heat on the soon-to-come Toronto premiere where far more journalists from across the globe descend? But Toronto is not only about journalists, it’s about audiences as well. It’s a case of “Audience vs. Oscars“, but we’ll get to more of that in a second…
As for what films I do expect to see in Toronto, I definitely expect to see David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars and the Toronto Star seems to think Jean-Marc Vallee will be there with Reese Witherspoon and their new film Wild. In fact, Witherspoon may have a double-billing this year with The Good Lie from director Philippe Fardeau.
If it’s ready it would also stand to presume Jason Reitman‘s Men, Women and Children will be on hand and I think it’s safe to expect Sony Classics to have Cannes entrants Mr. Turner, Leviathan and Foxcatcher among the titles on hand. Then again, Sony Classics has been the most vocally against Bailey’s new rules…
When it comes to really taking guesses I’d say Stephen Daldry‘s Trash seems like a good possibility, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Kevin Smith‘s Tusk in the Midnight Selection and Mikael R. Roskam‘s The Drop starring Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini and Noomi Rapace seems reasonable.
The Judge with Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall seems like a possibility as does St. Vincent, Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game.
With the trailer for Nightcrawler dropping recently it stands to assume it will be on the fall film festival circuit and I also expect David Gordon Green‘s Manglehorn starring Al Pacino to be among the titles announced.
I’d love it if David Ayer‘s Fury showed up, but I’m not counting on it, even though End of Watch did have a nice showing a couple years back, but other than that, I really have a hard time figuring it out.
You look over all the films I mention and it looks like, damn, that could be great, but if it doesn’t end up so great then Bailey’s attempt to strong-arm studios has back-fired and it has already seen some some push back from the likes of Sony Classics’ Tom Bernard who believes TIFF is in danger of becoming a “damaged” event.
Bernard told the Toronto Star, “They seem to be losing their point of view about being a filmmaker-friendly festival … to sort of put a blockade up against a small festival in the mountains [meaning Telluride] seems a bit imperialistic, doesn’t it? […] I know there are a lot of people out there who are not happy and a lot of filmmakers who are very angry. I heard this statement from the Toronto festival that kind of shocked me, when they said, ‘We want our festival to take ownership for these big movies in going to the Oscars.’ I didn’t know the festival owned movies!”
I looked, and I don’t know where the quote Bernard referenced came from, I couldn’t find it, but he’s clearly frustrated and I have to assume he can’t be the only one. We’ll see tomorrow how Bailey’s strategy panned out because as far as I can tell, when it comes to big movies, those I mentioned above seem like it’s the best the fest can get.
We’ll know more tomorrow morning and I’ll have the complete lineup for you once it’s available.
