Considering its reputation as a showcase for auteurs, you may be surprised to learn that Hollywood has been a fixture at the Cannes Film Festival since its inception. When the event was initially planned in 1939, the RKO Radio Pictures release “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” was set as the opening night gala. World War II saw that inaugural edition scrapped, but when the festival finally unfurled in 1946, studio films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” and George Cukor’s “Gaslight” were part of the program. In the decades since, studios have come and gone, but the allure of debuting on la Croisette has endured. Whether it’s a movie vying for the famed Palme d’Or, looking for international media attention by screening out of competition, or staging a PR event on the beach, generations of filmmakers, studio executives and marketing specialists have helped make Cannes into the spectacle that it is today.
“I don’t want to sound corny, but this is a festival that I watched with my mother on TV as a child, and it is the biggest stage for cinema,” says Joey Monteiro, executive vice president of international marketing for Neon. “There’s just a buzz that happens in the town and there is no red carpet like it in the world. The fact that the red carpet is all photographers and no interviews?”
That unique platform has made Cannes a global launchpad for studio releases for decades. This century alone, blockbuster titles such as “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Matrix Reloaded,” “The Da Vinci Code,” “Elvis” and “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith” have either had their world or international premieres at Cannes. “Shrek,” “Moulin Rouge” and “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” even debuted in competition.
Admittedly, Hollywood’s infatuation with the festival has ebbed and flowed over the years, but 2026 seems like a rare outlier. At publication, not one traditional studio release is scheduled for the festival. Yes, there will be new releases from U.S. distributors such as Apple Studios, with John Travolta’s “Propeller One-Way Night Coach”; Sony Pictures Classics, with Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas”; and Neon, with Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden.” But the majors are not making the transatlantic voyage this time around.
It’s a curious trend considering Cannes premieres have become a staple at the Academy Awards and three 2025 selections were nominated for best picture this calendar year. The 2024 Palme d’Or winner, “Anora,” went on to take Oscar’s top prize and “Parasite” also won both accolades in 2019-2020. But as with any premiere at a major international film festival, positive reactions are never guaranteed. In 2023, “Elemental” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” earned mixed reviews weeks before their global releases. High-profile pre-pandemic releases such as Steven Spielberg’s “The BFG” and Ron Howard’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story” also failed to win over the Cannes faithful. And who can forget Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” being almost universally panned six weeks before its June 2024 drop?
Have recent stumbles scared off some distributors?
A studio executive, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about strategy, says, “Listen, every campaign for any movie has to be bespoke to that film. Depending on what the movie is, you’re certainly constantly thinking about what the response will be there, how long of a throw you have until you put materials into the world or until the movie’s being released itself. Or if you’re thinking about an awards window, you’re definitely thinking about how that reaction can impact a movie. And we’ve seen it. It can work for or against movies.”
A poster for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” outside the Carlton hotel ahead of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
(Joel C. Ryan / Invision / AP)
This is partially because social media is now also a massive part of the equation. Sites such as Reddit and Letterboxd also spread reactions to an ever-growing legion of cinephile fans online. This wasn’t as big an issue two decades ago, when 20th Century Fox premiered “X-Men: The Last Stand” before its Memorial Day weekend release, or action flicks such as “Cliffhanger” or Roland Emmerich’s “Godzilla” used Cannes to launch overseas marketing campaigns in the 1990s.
“The internet has certainly changed the way audiences connect with movies, for good and for bad. That can have an outsized impact,” the studio executive said. “But these are also some of the [starriest] nights you’ll have in the movie business. And the blast radius of those nights is now bigger than ever because you can really get some bite-sized nuggets that can travel a long way in a way that they weren’t able to a decade ago.”
Of course, there is a long list of wide-release films that have used Cannes to their advantage to generate early buzz in recent years, including Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” Pete Docter’s “Inside Out,” the Elton John musical biopic “Rocketman” and “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” which earned raves a year ago before fueling solid summer tentpole returns.
Not only is Cannes a premier global marketing launchpad, but distributors admittedly face pressure from filmmakers who want their moment in the spotlight in the festival’s famous 2,300-seat Lumière theater. The studio executive adds, “It’s also whether a film’s ready. Is it too early? When are we releasing the movie? All those kinds of questions come into play as we’re having those conversations.”
The temptation for that taking center stage in the South of France remains, however. As Monteiro notes, “When we go to a film festival, the pageantry is a big part of the presentation, and I don’t think there is any pageant that is as glamorous and scrutinized as Cannes.”
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