Skip to footer

Baz Luhrmann's 'The Great Gatsby' will open the Cannes Film Festival

'The Great Gatsby' is scheduled to hit US theaters May 10, five days before it will open the festival on May 15.

|
Lee Jin-man/AP
Leonardo DiCaprio (pictured) stars in the film 'The Great Gatsby.'
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

After having had its release date moved up several months, director Baz Luhrmann’s take on F. Scott Fitzgerald classic “The Great Gatsby” will open the Cannes Film Festival in May.

“The Great Gatsby” is scheduled to hit US theaters May 10, five days before it will open the festival on May 15.

“It is a great honor for all those who have worked on The Great Gatsby to open the Cannes Film Festival,” Luhrmann said in a statement, according to USA Today. "We are thrilled to return to a country, place and festival that has always been so close to our hearts.”

Luhrmann’s version of the classic novel stars “Django Unchained” actor Leonardo DiCaprio as the title character, “An Education” star Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan, and Tobey Maguire of the “Spider-Man” films as narrator Nick Carraway.

According to Reuters, DiCaprio's return to the festival in association with the film will be his first appearance there since 2007.

Films that have opened the Cannes Film Festival over the past few years are often critically acclaimed and have gone on to be nominated for Oscars, Golden Globes, and other awards. The 2012 opener, Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom,” snagged a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination and a Best Musical or Comedy Golden Globe nomination. Director Woody Allen’s film “Midnight in Paris,” which opened the 2011 festival, earned Best Picture and Best Director Oscar nominations and won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar as well as the Best Screenplay Golden Globe. It also snagged Best Musical or Comedy and Best Director Golden Globe nominations.

Bucking the trend was the 2010 Cannes Film Festival opener, director Ridley Scott’s take on “Robin Hood,” which was critically panned. However, Pixar’s well-received animated film “Up,” which was the rare animated film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, opened the 2009 festival.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Baz Luhrmann's 'The Great Gatsby' will open the Cannes Film Festival
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2013/0319/Baz-Luhrmann-s-The-Great-Gatsby-will-open-the-Cannes-Film-Festival
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe