The Great Gatsby

to open Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes Film Festival has an American flavor this year, with a Hollywood icon heading the jury and a quintessential US literary figure opening the event: The Great Gatsby.

Organizers said Tuesday that the film “The Great Gatsby,” with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role and directed by Australian Baz Luhrmann, will open this year’s Cannes festival — in 3D, no less.

Luhrmann stressed the film’s French connection, saying in a statement that author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “some of the most poignant and beautiful passages” of “The Great Gatsby” at a French Riviera villa not far from Cannes. Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan also star in Luhrmann’s version of the 1925 novel.

Steven Spielberg is heading the jury at the Cannes festival this year, which runs May 15-26

The Great Gatsby 2013 movie adaptation directed by Baz Luhrmann, and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan will not top the North American box office this weekend. That’s the not-so-good news. But then again, no one was expecting The Great Gatsby to soar past Robert Downey Jr’s special-effects-laden Iron Man 3. True, both movies are in 3D, but … maybe if Jay Gatsby’s hair gel were capable of blowing up all of New England or something, then it’d have had a chance. (Updated The Great Gatsby weekend box office estimate.)

If those early estimates are on target, The Great Gatsby will beat not only distributor Warner Bros.’ forecasts, but those of most pundits as well, who had been expecting at most $40m — and that was already a marked "overperformance."

Previous big-screen versions of The Great Gatsby are the following: Herbert Brenon’s 1926 adaptation, starring Warner Baxter and Lois Wilson; Elliott Nugent’s 1949 version, with Alan Ladd and Betty Field; and Jack Clayton’s poorly received 1974 remake, with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow.

This latest adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic 1920s novel will also beat Baz Luhrmann’s previous North American opening-weekend record holder, the Hugh Jackman / Nicole Kidman romantic drama Australia, which debuted with $14.8m in 2008 — that is, if you choose to ignore inflation. Taking that into account, Luhrmann’s biggest US/Canada opening weekend belongs to Romeo + Juliet, perhaps not coincidentally a grooved-up version of another old English-language literary work, also starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a passionate lover (here Claire Danes plays DiCaprio’s romantic interest) . Romeo + Juliet took in $11.13m on its debut weekend in 1996, or approximately $20m today.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Carey Mulligan

Elisabeth Debicki

Isla Fisher

Joel Edgerton

Tobey Maguire

Besides three-time Oscar nominee Leonardo DiCaprio (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, The Aviator, Blood Diamond) and Carey Mulligan (2009 Best Actress Oscar nominee for An Education), The Great Gatsby 2013 cast includes former Spider-Man Tobey Maguire, Animal Kingdom‘s Joel Edgerton, and Zero Dark Thirty‘s Jason Clarke.

Watch the trailer HD

of  

"The Great Gatsby"

Also: Isla Fisher, Bollywood veteran Amitabh Bachchan, Elizabeth Debicki, Max Cullen, Callan McAuliffe, Barry Otto, Gemma Ward, and veteran Australian actor Jack Thompson (The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Breaker Morant). Baz Luhrmann and frequent collaborator Craig Pearce (another Romeo + Juliet link) co-wrote the 2013 The Great Gatsby.

Watch the trailer 2 HD

of  

"The Great Gatsby"

*    *    *