\n\tAre the majors getting spooked by the festival premiere?\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is not a single studio-backed movie among the more than 200 films screening at this year\u2019s Berlinale<\/a> (Feb. 12-22).\u00a0And its not just Berlin<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Virtually none\u00a0of the biggest and most acclaimed studio films of 2025 \u2014\u00a0Sinners,\u00a0One Battle After Another,\u00a0Zootopia 2,\u00a0F1: The Movie,\u00a0Weapons\u00a0\u2014 chose the festival route. The odd tentpole out was Paramount\u2019s\u00a0Mission: Impossible \u2013 The Final Reckoning, which bowed in Cannes. The red carpet glam and guaranteed press coverage that come with a festival premiere, and that used to be seen as a key asset in marketing and promoting a big movie ahead of launch, seem to have lost some of their appeal.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think this is less about the Berlinale and more about what\u2019s happening right now in general,\u201d Berlin festival director Tricia Tuttle tells\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cThe biggest films of the year in the crossover art house commercial sector didn\u2019t launch at festivals. There\u2019s a nervousness, because it\u2019s a very difficult marketplace, a nervousness, about having reviews come out very long before the launch of a film<\/a>, [and not] being able to control the way those films are launched.\u201d<\/p>\n A studio marketing exec, who has handled several festival launches, told\u00a0THR\u00a0that bringing a movie to Berlin, Cannes, Venice or Toronto adds a degree of risk. \u201cYou don\u2019t know how a festival audience, and festival critics, will react. If they trash the movie, your campaign can be over before it started.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Tuttle traces the trend back to the 2024 Venice festival launch of\u00a0Joker: Folie \u00e0 Deux, Todd Phillips\u2019 follow-up to\u00a0Joker, his Martin Scorsese-style comic book movie from 2019.\u00a0Joker\u00a0premiered at Venice, won the festival and used that momentum to power a $1 billion box office run. The follow-up, trashed by festival critics, was declared dead on arrival and limped its way to a meager $200 million worldwide. There were a few other big festival misses in 2024, including George Miller\u2019s\u00a0Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga\u00a0and Kevin Costner\u2019s ill-fated\u00a0Horizon: An American Saga, both from Warner Bros., which both premiered at Cannes. Both got the obligatory Cannes standing ovation \u2014 a reported 7 minutes for\u00a0Furiosa, a full triumphant 10 for\u00a0Horizon\u00a0\u2014 but it didn\u2019t help much.\u00a0Furiosa\u00a0grossed $174 million worldwide, less than half of Miller\u2019s 2015 Cannes bower\u00a0Mad Max Fury Road. Horizon\u00a0flopped so badly, earning under $40 million, that Warner dropped plans to release Part 2 of the saga (it remains in limbo).\u00a0<\/p>\n It would be wrong to blame the festivals for the flops. Audiences hated\u00a0Joker: Folie \u00e0 Deux and Horizon.\u00a0It\u2019s unlikely they could have been hits, whatever their rollout plan. The 2024 Venice Festival opened with Tim Burton\u2019s\u00a0Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which critics loved, and it went on to massive success, earning $450 million worldwide. After its Cannes bow, the final\u00a0Mission: Impossible\u00a0movie grossed $600 million. Less than the studio had hoped, perhaps, but on par for a franchise-ender that left many nonplussed.\u00a0<\/p>\n And for many a studio-backed auteur \u2014\u00a0Yorgos Lanthimos, Wes Anderson,\u00a0Chlo\u00e9 Zhao, Richard Linklater, Guillermo del Toro, Bong Joon Ho \u2014the festival route remains the go-to. Last year\u2019s Berlinale featured world premieres of both Bong\u2019s\u00a0Mickey 17\u00a0(from Warner Bros.) and Linklater\u2019s\u00a0Blue Moon\u00a0(from Sony).\u00a0<\/p>\n If the major studios are getting nervous about festival launches, it likely has as much to do with the changing nature of marketing campaigns. The lavish print and TV coverage granted a festival bow means less in a world where social media drives ticket sales. Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s guerrilla campaigns for\u00a0A Complete Unknown\u00a0and\u00a0Marty Supreme\u00a0(an A24 film that also skipped the festival circuit) designed to generate viral videos, not red carpet sound bites, are the new model. The festivals seem to acknowledge this \u2014\u00a0both Berlin and Cannes have sponsorship deals with TikTok.\u00a0<\/p>\n