After last year’s strikes barred talent from the red carpet, this year’s fest offers a who’s who of stars and Oscar winners.
The fall film festival signals the start of awards season by delivering first looks at prestige big-screen content.
When the 2024 Venice Film Fest unveiled its 81st edition, it signals that movie stars are back. Big time!
The Lido will be packed with big names, many of them Oscar winners, making it one of the most anticipated fests of the season.
Leading the pack are Wolfs stars Oscar winners Brad Pitt and George Clooney in the action drama from Jon Watts.
Oscar nominee Lady Gaga and Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix will sing and slither their way back to Venice as DC villains in Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie a Deux.
Oscar winners Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore will return to the canals for The Room Next Door, Pedro Almodóvar’s long awaited English-language feature debut.
Daniel Craig toplines Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, which also stars Lesley Manville and Drew Starkey.
Oscar winner Nicole Kidman is in Babygirl opposite Harris Dickinson and Antonio Banderas for filmmaker Halina Reijn. Cate Blanchett stars in Alfonso Cuarón’s small-screen series Disclaimer opposite Kevin Kline and Sacha Baron Cohen for Apple TV+. We can’t fail to mention Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Tim Burton’s return to the underworld with a stacked cast featuring Michael Keaton, Jenna Ortega, Winona Ryder, Willem Dafoe, Catherine O’Hara and Italian legend Monica Bellucci.
Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist will bring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones and Joe Alwyn; Justin Kurzel’s The Order will give us Nicholas Hoult, Jude Law, and Tye Sheridan.
Oscar winner Angelina Jolie, who is engaged in a bitter, years-long divorce with Pittt, will walk the red carpet for the world premiere of Pablo Larraín’s Maria, a biopic of famed opera diva Maria Callas in the final days of her life.
Though it seems unlikely that the exes will cross paths — organizers have given plenty of breathing room between the two films, with Maria debuting Aug. 29 and Wolfs bowing Sept. 1 — they may have a hard time avoiding personal questions on press lines. One well-positioned veteran publicist shrugged it off by saying, “The festival knows how to schedule their events to avoid all of that.”
Phoenix will have a hard time dodging questions about why he dropped out of Todd Haynes’ untitled gay romance project just days before shooting began in Mexico, a decision that reportedly cost millions and could lead to a lawsuit.
The gambling crowd might want to put a wager on Clooney being asked about his recent sharp-tongued response in GQ to “some shit” Quentin Tarantino said about him recently, that “he’s not a movie star,” prompting Clooney to tell the magazine, “All right, dude, fuck off.”
Travis Scott might also breeze through Venice to check out Harmony Korine’s Baby Invasion, the follow-up to Aggro Dr1ft that stars the rapper (who was just arrested in Paris during the Olympics).
