In 2001, Thierry Frémaux arrived in Cannes with a mandate: Build a bridge to Hollywood.
The newly installed festival director made a pilgrimage to Los Angeles to sell the major studios on the virtues of having their movies premiere on the Riviera. And he found two important believers in Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos, who were running 20th Century Fox at the time, and were trying to find the right platform to launch Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!,” a jukebox musical starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor as tragic lovers. They decided that Cannes, which helped shape France’s reputation as a destination for global cinema, was the perfect fit for a film that was a love letter to Paris. The opening night bash was one of the most storied in Cannes’ history — champagne flowed and more than 1,000 guests partied as cancan dancers performed and DJ Fatboy Slim worked the turntables.
“It was such a celebration,” Frémaux recounted at Variety’s opening night party at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. “I had a feeling that nothing could stop us from that moment.”
And over the ensuing 25 years, Hollywood frequently did decamp for the Croisette, with directors like Clint Eastwood (“Mystic River”), Martin Scorsese (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), George Miller (“Mad Max: Fury Road”), and Steven Spielberg (“Matilda”) debuting their work in the festival’s massive Lumiere Theatre. Blockbusters from 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” which saw Tom Cruise gazing up from the steps of the Palais as military jets streaked across the sky, to “Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning” in 2025, have also invested in splashy Cannes premieres. But this year it’s a different story. There had been hopes that Spielberg would bring “Disclosure Day” or Christopher Nolan would premiere “The Odyssey” at Cannes, but instead the major studios have shunned the festival, viewing it as too risky and too expensive.
