Streamer Brings 3 Starry Movies to Festival

Amid a sea of A-listers at this year’s Venice Film Festival — the 82nd edition is shaping up to be the starriest parade of talent on the Lido in recent memory — Netflix will be on the scene in a major way as the streamer’s top executives will be rubbing elbows at the festival’s most anticipated premieres.

The Hollywood Reporter has learned that co-CEO Ted Sarandos, chief content officer Bela Bajaria, chairman of film Dan Lin and awards guru Lisa Taback and members of her team will be in attendance this week as Netflix presents its most robust Venice slate ever.

With three (highly anticipated) competition selections, Netflix is responsible for infusing a healthy dose of those aforementioned movie stars to the festival courtesy of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein starring Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz, Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly with George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup and Emily Mortimer, and Kathryn Bigelow‘s A House of Dynamite with Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Anthony Ramos and Jared Harris.

Netflix’s Venice debuts also signal the streamer’s confidence in the films at an important moment in the awards season race as the festival has long been a favored launching pad for titles that tend to do well in the months leading up to the Academy Awards. The showing also comes a year after the streamer snagged the most Oscar nominations for any film in the race last year as Emilia Pérez picked up 13, a record for non-English language movies. To celebrate, the Jay Kelly team huddled for a private dinner on Wednesday, while del Toro and his Frankenstein stars are expected at a Saturday cocktail event. (Clooney, however, had to miss the dinner and cut short his press junket schedule as he fell ill on Wednesday.)

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera even praised the quality of Netflix’s offerings this year. “They couldn’t come last year because they didn’t have any films to offer, but they have three very strong films this year, from Kathryn Bigelow, from Noah Baumbach and from Guillermo de Toro,” Barbera explained. “We worried if it was a good idea to have three films from Netflix in the main competition, but they are all so good, they all deserve to be in there.”

Baumbach’s Jay Kelly will be the first out of the gate with a world premiere scheduled for Thursday evening. Clooney (with wife Amal), Sandler and Dern have all been spotted on the Lido already ahead of the big night. Baumbach is here, too, along with his agent, UTA partner Jeremy Barber, who also represents Baumbach’s filmmaker partner and frequent collaborator Greta Gerwig. She has a role in Jay Kelly and could attend. Coincidentally, Gerwig is currently at work on The Chronicles of Narnia adaptation, also for Netflix, so it’s all in the family.

Jay Kelly casts Clooney as a famous movie actor who is on a whirlwind and unexpectedly profound journey through Europe with his devoted manager, Ron, played by Sandler. Here’s how Baumbach describes the film in his official director’s statement: “Jay Kelly is about a man looking back at his life and reflecting on the choices, the sacrifices, the successes, the mistakes he’s made. When is it too late to change the course of our lives? Jay Kelly is an actor, and as such, the movie is about identity. How do we perform ourselves? Who are we as parents, children, friends, professionals? Are we good? Are we bad? What is the gap between who we’ve decided we are and who we might actually be? What makes a life? Jay Kelly is about what it means to be yourself.”

Saturday brings the world premiere of Frankenstein, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in an experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation. “This film concludes a quest that started at age 7, when I saw James Whale’s Frankenstein films for the first time. I felt the jolt of recognition in that seminal moment: Gothic horror became my church, and Boris Karloff my Messiah,” del Toro explained in his director’s statement.

Bigelow and her House of Dynamite crew won’t be arriving until next week, ahead of the film’s world premiere on Tuesday, Sept. 2. Her film tells the story of what happens when a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, forcing a race to determine who is responsible and how to respond. “Multiple nations possess enough nuclear weapons to end civilisation within minutes. And yet, there’s a kind of collective numbness — a quiet normalisation of the unthinkable. How can we call this ‘defense’ when the inevitable outcome is total destruction?” Bigelow asks in her festival statement. “I wanted to make a film that confronts this paradox — to explore the madness of a world that lives under the constant shadow of annihilation, yet rarely speaks of it.”