Social Reckoning, Digger, Dune 3, Cliff Booth, Artificial Likely Skipping due to Production Delays/Marketing Considerations
Alberto Barbera, the head of the Venice Film Festival, was interviewed about the lack of studio features at this year's fest, something TIFF has experienced to a lesser extent. His answers are below and with TIFF just a week after, pretty much precludes these films too.
DEADLINE: Another absence is that of the big studio films, which has been a trend across the European festivals this year. Do think Hollywood is pulling back from the festival scene for good?
BARBERA: If you look closely at the prediction pieces published in the trades on films that could be at Venice in the last few months, there were very few studio films. There was Iñárritu’s Digger which Warner Bros. immediately declared they didn’t want to participate in the festival for marketing reasons. Alan Sorkin’s film (The Social Reckoning) isn’t finished because they have to reshoot sequences in August and therefore it won’t be ready for Venice. David Fincher’s film (The Adventures of Cliff Booth), which at one point seemed certain to be a contender for Venice, has had production delays because Fincher, due to a personal issue, interrupted post-production and accumulated a delay that has meant the film isn’t ready. I’ve been in constant contact with Denis Villeneuve (on Dune: Part 3), who told me, ‘We’re very far from finishing the film. The film will be released at Christmas, and we’ll be ready a little earlier.’
It’s also fair to say that the studios are going through a complex time, merging, redefining production strategies, earning less… in short there’s a whole series of things. For sure the studios are questioning how to promote the films… but again I don’t want to jump to conclusions and say that from now on, studios won’t go to festivals because it’s not worth it, it costs too much.
DEADLINE: Another film that got away was Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial. We were hoping Neon might launch it in Venice after it took on the film in June...
BARBERA: Me too. The film is beautiful. I spoke at length with Tom Quinn, and he told me that the film won’t be released until January. He said, ‘We’ll do a technical release in December to qualify it for the Oscars, as is often done, but we can’t release it any earlier; we don’t want to release it any earlier. We have to sell the film. We paid dearly for it. We have to sell the rest of the world. We need time to succeed. So we’ve decided not to do any festivals.’
From an interview with Deadline here: https://deadline.com/2026/07/venice-head-studio-absence-women-neon-artificial-1237001760/
