Major Hollywood studios are increasingly avoiding festival premieres for their biggest releases, marking a significant shift in how blockbuster films reach audiences.
This year’s Berlinale features zero studio-backed movies among its 200-plus film lineup.
The red carpet glamour and guaranteed press coverage that once made festivals essential marketing tools appear to be losing their shine for major releases.
What’s driving this dramatic change in strategy?
Studios Want Control Over Their Narratives
Berlin festival director Tricia Tuttle sees broader industry anxieties at play rather than festival-specific issues.
The biggest films of the year in the crossover art house commercial sector didn’t launch at festivals. There’s a nervousness, because it’s a very difficult marketplace, a nervousness, about having reviews come out before very long before the launch of a film, [and not] being able to control the way those films are launched.
Nearly all 2025’s major studio releases—Sinners, One Battle After Another, Zootopia 2, F1: The Movie, and Weapons—skipped festivals entirely. Only Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning premiered at Cannes.
A studio marketing executive who has managed multiple festival launches explained the calculation to The Hollywood Reporter.
You don’t know how a festival audience, and festival critics, will react. If they trash the movie, your campaign can be over before it started.
The Joker Sequel Disaster Changed Everything
Tuttle traces this shift directly back to Joker: Folie à Deux and its disastrous Venice premiere.
The original Joker premiered at Venice in 2019, won the festival’s top prize, and rode that momentum to $1 billion at the box office. Todd Phillips’ sequel followed the same playbook with wildly different results.
Festival critics savaged the follow-up. The film was declared dead on arrival and limped to just $200 million worldwide—a catastrophic disappointment for a sequel to a billion-dollar hit.
Other High-Profile Festival Flops Followed
Warner Bros. suffered additional festival setbacks in 2024 with two Cannes premieres that underperformed dramatically.
George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga received a reported seven-minute standing ovation but earned only $174 million worldwide—less than half what Miller’s previous Mad Max: Fury Road generated after its 2015 Cannes debut.
Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga fared even worse despite a triumphant 10-minute ovation. The film grossed under $40 million, prompting Warner to cancel plans for releasing Part 2.
But Festivals Don’t Guarantee Failure Either
Festival premieres aren’t death sentences—audiences ultimately determine success or failure.
Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opened the 2024 Venice Festival to critical acclaim and earned $450 million worldwide. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning grossed $600 million after Cannes, meeting franchise expectations for a concluding chapter.
Audiences hated Joker: Folie à Deux and Horizon. These films likely would have flopped regardless of rollout strategy.
Social Media Trumps Traditional Festival Buzz
Marketing campaigns have fundamentally transformed in ways that diminish festival value for major releases.
Lavish print and television coverage from festival bows carries less weight when social media drives ticket sales. Timothée Chalamet’s guerrilla marketing campaigns for A Complete Unknown and Marty Supreme—designed to generate viral videos rather than red carpet soundbites—represent the emerging playbook.
Festivals acknowledge this shift. Both Berlin and Cannes have established sponsorship deals with TikTok to stay relevant in changing media landscapes.
Auteurs Still Love Festivals
Studio-backed auteur directors continue embracing festival premieres despite broader industry hesitation.
Filmmakers like Yorgos Lanthimos, Wes Anderson, Chloé Zhao, Richard Linklater, Guillermo del Toro, and Bong Joon Ho consistently choose festivals as their launch platforms. Last year’s Berlinale featured world premieres of Bong’s Mickey 17 (Warner Bros.) and Linklater’s Blue Moon (Sony).
Festivals Remain Essential for Independent Cinema
While major studios retreat from festivals, independent and international releases depend on them more than ever.
Most significant indie and international breakouts from last year—including Sorry Baby, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, and It Was Just an Accident—launched at festivals.
Films lacking major studio marketing budgets need the hype, critical credibility, and global media attention festivals provide. For these productions, festival premieres at Berlin, Cannes, or Venice can determine whether they find audiences or disappear into obscurity.
A veteran French sales agent summarized the stakes plainly.
We need these festivals, to get our films noticed; we need them to sell these films. Without them, these movies disappear.
The festival circuit isn’t dying—it’s bifurcating. Major studios increasingly view festivals as risky propositions that threaten carefully orchestrated marketing campaigns, while independent filmmakers see them as essential launchpads that can make or break their projects’ commercial prospects.