PARIS, May 11 — Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Top Gun have all premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the last decade. But in 2026, not a single Hollywood blockbuster is programmed there, raising questions about why US studios are ghosting the event.

The world’s biggest film festival, which kicks off on Tuesday, has long relied on Hollywood to provide a dose of mass-market entertainment alongside the sometimes edgy independent cinema that forms the core of its programme.

Mega-stars such as Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford help draw attention to the same red carpets walked by auteur directors and the casts of obscure art-house productions — all in the name of supporting the fragile cinema industry.

Although Cannes director Thierry Fremaux made platforming American productions a priority when he took over 25 years ago, he was left having to explain their absence when he unveiled the line-up of films in April.

“Outside of studio filmmaking, independent cinema — cinema made somewhere other than Los Angeles — continues to exist,” Fremaux said.

There are two independent American films in the main competition: Paper Tiger by James Gray, starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, as well as The Man I Love by Ira Sachs featuring Rami Malek.

But Hollywood big beasts Universal, Disney, Warner, Sony and Paramount, as well as streaming giants Netflix and Amazon, have decided to pass.

It was a similar story at the Berlin film festival in February where director Tricia Tuttle was left with a blockbuster-free schedule.

‘Nervousness’

Tuttle blamed low risk-appetite and commercial pressures — rather than another sign of America’s estrangement from Europe under US President Donald Trump.

“There’s a nervousness in a very difficult marketplace: nervousness about reviews coming out long before release and about controlling the way films of that scale are launched because there’s so much at stake,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in January.

She cited the dreadful critical reception for Joker: Folie a Deux which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2024 before bombing at the box office.

“We’ve seen more reticence since,” Tuttle told the publication.

In a more confident, profitable environment, or when Hollywood is churning out films more regularly, a commercial dud might be easily absorbed.

Nowadays, it spells major trouble for budget-conscious executives.

Tough critics

J. Sperling Reich, a Los Angeles-based film critic and Cannes veteran, said Hollywood studios make fewer Cannes-compatible films. They prefer to control their launch schedules, rather than having them dictated by a festival.

“They’re essentially flying in talent, trying to figure out a publicity narrative... two, three, sometimes four months early (before launch), and then they expose that film to the world’s toughest critics,” he told AFP.

“If it doesn’t fly in Cannes, it’s going to be tough to recover from that,” he explained.

The most recent blockbusters, Michael Jackson biopic Michael and the The Devil Wears Prada 2, organised their own tightly controlled promotional events, boosted by influencers and social media.

Reich cited Christopher Nolan’s upcoming ancient Greek action movie Odyssey and Steven Spielberg’s science-fiction thriller Disclosure Day as possible Cannes films.

“But the reality is those films don’t need Cannes,” he said.

Coming together

Others are sceptical that 2026 signals a permanent rupture between Hollywood and European festivals.

Indeed, if the bad reviews for the Joker: Folie a Deux in Venice in 2024 are to blame, then why was the Italian festival so packed with big-budget American films just last September?

Eric Marti, who heads the box office specialist Comscore in France, said studios have always had a transactional approach to Cannes.

“It’s a tremendous showcase, as it’s one of the most watched events, but they also have a very well-oiled promotional machine. If the Cannes dates and their launches line up, the two come together,” he said.

Hollywood was not “totally absent”, he added.

The festival has added a Fast and Furious special screening in the first days to mark the 25th year of the Universal-owned franchise, with the original stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster flying in.

Hollywood may simply be sitting out Cannes in 2026, only to rev back into action next year. — AFP

Alan Mays posted a photo:

Photographer: "[Arthur] Mason's Art Studio, Valley Falls, Kansas."

A nineteenth-century cabinet card photo of an unidentified man with a long beard.

For other longbeards, see Man with Beard, Topeka, Kansas, Rasputin and the Amorphous Enigma, and Benjamin Purnell, Founder of the House of David, Benton Harbor, Michigan.

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of hippies (certified or imitation).

NEW ‌YORK, May 10 — Blake Lively, who recently settled her lawsuit against Justin Baldoni’s production company, is still seeking damages from the actor and director tied to their 2024 movie It Ends With Us, Lively’s ‌lawyers said on Thursday. According to a filing in Manhattan federal court, Lively wants Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios to cover her legal fees and pay damages for filing a “retaliatory” defamation lawsuit, which the judge overseeing their legal disputes dismissed last June.

“As the ‘prevailing defendant,’ Ms. Lively is entitled not just to attorneys’ fees and costs, but also to compensatory damages tripled, and punitive damages,” the letter said.

The request prolongs often acrimonious litigation that began in December 2024, when Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment during the filming of It Ends With Us, whose themes included domestic violence. US District Judge Lewis Liman dismissed Lively’s harassment claims and ‌all claims against Baldoni on April 2, but said she could sue for retaliation. ⁠Both sides said on Monday they settled the ⁠remaining claims.

“By agreeing to this settlement, and waiving their ⁠right to appeal, Justin Baldoni and every ⁠individual defendant now ⁠face personal liability for abusing the legal system to silence and intimidate Ms. Lively,” her lawyers Michael Gottlieb and Esra Hudson said in a joint statement on Thursday.

Actor Justin Baldoni leaves the courthouse after ‘settlement conference’ at the United States District Court in New York City February 11, 2026. — Reuters pic

Bryan Freedman, a ⁠lawyer for Baldoni, said in a separate statement that Lively settled because she knew she would lose. “All that remains is a pending request for fees based on a very narrow issue that has been with the court since September,” he said.

Lawyers for Lively called Monday’s settlement a “resounding victory” for her, while Freedman called it a “total victory” for Baldoni. Lively is ⁠seeking fees and damages under a 2023 California law designed to protect sexual harassment accusers from retaliatory defamation lawsuits by their alleged perpetrators.

Baldoni’s US$400 million (RM1.5 billion) lawsuit accused Lively, ⁠her husband and fellow actor Ryan Reynolds, and others of trying to smear him and wrest ⁠control of ⁠the movie. Liman concluded that Baldoni did not show Lively defamed him, and that any alleged defamatory claims about Baldoni that Lively made to a California civil rights agency were privileged.

It Ends With Us starred Lively as a flower shop owner who marries a neurosurgeon played by Baldoni. The movie grossed more than US$351 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. — Reuters

In keeping with the Paramount cartoon theme, in today’s cartoon a turtle has to deal with Wolfie. I wish someone would give this poor wolf some food…

But first, life here, Thunderbean and related:

Yesterday was an incredibly busy and exhausting day here with the Senior Studio students at CCS all showing their final projects. It’s also a farewell or sorts, after spending four years knowing them and helping them through their college years. Some of the students graduating have helped more recently on Thunderbean projects, including digital restoration and cleanup for the things we’re doing for MeTV as well as a little animation for titles on the Blu-rays.

We’re nearly done sending a batch of eight special discs, and I’m working on preparing the next batch to go out hopefully within the month. I’m also helping Tommy Stathes finish off his excellent Dinky Doodle Blu-ray, a project with many years and many hours invested in it. It’s been one of my favorites to work on, as was the recent Back to the Inkwell Blu-ray/DVD set.

As I wait for several things to get back from replication, I’ve been putting the Cartoons for Victory set to the forefront after it was on a sort of holding pattern for a while. We were waiting for the four “Hook” cartoons from the Naval film archive. Sadly, we were recently informed that their prints of all four films are deteriorating, as were the prints that were scanned many years back. We’ve decided to no longer have the set in a holding pattern and are working on getting this Blu-ray upgrade together with the best material we have. We have the Hooks from the master tape we have and a partial print of one of the shorts. There’s so many great things on the set, and, as the other in progress titles, we’ll be glad to have this one out.

And – onto The Old Shell Game (1948)

I know a lot of you folks are enjoying the new Famous Studios Champions set from Cartoon Logic. It’s so nice to see these films from their master materials- a great improvement over previous available copies. Thad Komorowski did a beautiful job in cleanup/restoration of the shorts. If you haven’t gotten this set yet and like the Famous Studio cartoons, it’s a must.

Thunderbean did a DVD set of Noveltoons back in 2012. It was some of the first scans we did in HD, and cleaning them up with very primitive software back then was a real chore. We were so happy to get a good amount of the films in 35mm Technicolor prints. When we finally ported the set to Blu-ray, Thad was instrumental in cleaning up many of the films as well as providing a few commentary tracks. The set has been out of print for a while, and a few months back we decided to reissue it, re-cleaning up some of the films with the better, newer restoration software and replacing some of the prints. It will be out with the next batch of discs sent from Thunderbean within the next month or so.

Finding vintage 35mm prints in good shape on Famous Studio’s cartoons was always hard, but the collectors have been incredibly generous in lending things for so many of the Thunderbean projects. I’m glad there’s people that are involved in collecting that are generous enough to lend their rare prints. It’s not everyone of course, and some of the things we *really* want have been scuttled away for many years. Hopefully we’ll be able to borrow some of the those in the future.

Jerry Beck lent us this print of The Old Shell Game when we were producing the Blu-ray. It was pretty beat up and missing a little piece of footage near the end, but looked great in Technicolor otherwise. We’ve done a little more cleanup to the short now, removing many of the lines as best as we could. It’s still probably the most worn film on the set, but still a pretty fun watch.

I like the Famous Studios cartoons, and I always wonder how many of the stories came about in the 40s. It’s such a varied group of films in terms of themes and direction, with so many of them being really entertaining.

Let us know your thoughts on this one- especially if you have never seen it before (I bet most of you have though!).

Have a good week everyone!

Abrams Studios has announced that its upcoming title, Morels: Out of This World, will release on May 28, 2026, for Windows PC via Steam. The game builds on the studio’s earlier nature-focused concepts but shifts the setting beyond Earth, placing players as explorers and photographers on a series of alien planets with unfamiliar ecosystems.

[Read More]

Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:

British card by Starlyte Studios, Malvern, no. A.3. Photo: Gainsborough.

English film, television, and stage actor Michael Rennie (1909-1971) was best known for his starring role as the space visitor Klaatu in the science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

Eric Alexander Rennie was born in Idle, now a Bradford suburb, in 1909 as the son of James Rennie, who operated a century-old wool mill, and Edith Dobby Rennie. His great-great-grandfather, named John Rennie, designed and built New London Bridge. Eric was educated at The Leys, a private school in Cambridge. He worked as a car salesman and manager of his uncle's rope factory before he turned to acting. In 1935, he adopted the professional name Michael Rennie. “Handsome but hollow”, according to Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Rennie gained experience in acting technique while touring the provinces in British repertory. At the age of 28, he was noticed by Gaumont British, which arranged a screen test. He first appeared onscreen as the stand-in for Robert Young in Secret Agent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936). Between 1936 and 1940, he appeared in minor unbilled roles in ten additional films. Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, the 1.93 m tall Rennie began to receive offers for larger film roles, starting with his first (small-billed) performance in the wartime morale booster The Big Blockade (Charles Frend, 1940), starring Michael Redgrave. Six films later, however, Michael Rennie also had his first film lead. The suspense drama Tower of Terror (Lawrence Huntington, 1941), released shortly after Pearl Harbor, was styled in the manner of a Horror film and starred Wilfrid Lawson as a mad Dutch lighthouse keeper in Nazi-occupied Netherlands, while second-billed Rennie and third-billed Movita had the romantic leads. His career was interrupted by war service. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1941 and would become a flight instructor for over two years. With the Second World War's end in May 1945, Rennie began to be seen as a potential star as a result of his roles in two vehicles for Britain's most popular star of the era, Margaret Lockwood: the musical I'll Be Your Sweetheart (Val Guest, 1945) and, most prominently, the sensual costume adventure The Wicked Lady (Leslie Arliss, 1945). The latter turned out to be the year's biggest box office hit, subsequently being listed ninth on a list of the top ten highest-grossing British films. He also had a single prominent scene as a commander of Roman centurions in Caesar and Cleopatra (Gabriel Pascal, 1946), starring Vivien Leigh and Claude Rains. Second leads and then leads in seven other British films produced between 1946 and 1949 followed.

Michael Rennie, along with Jean Simmons and James Mason, was one of several British actors offered Hollywood contracts in 1949–1950 by 20th Century-Fox's studio head, Darryl F. Zanuck. The first film under his new contract was the British-filmed Medieval period adventure The Black Rose (Henry Hathaway, 1950), starring Tyrone Power. Rennie's second Fox film, the Film-Noir The 13th Letter (Otto Preminger, 1950) was a remake of the French film Le Corbeau / The Raven (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1943). His next film gave him first billing and assured him screen immortality. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951) was the first post-war ‘A’ Science-Fiction film. According to Wikipedia, it is “A serious, high-minded exploration of humanity's place in the universe and our responsibility to maintain peaceful coexistence, it has remained the gold standard for the genre of the era.” Convinced that it had a potential leading man under contract, the studio decided to produce a version of Les Misérables (Lewis Milestone, 1952) as a vehicle for him. Rennie's performance was respectfully, but not enthusiastically, received by the critics. Ultimately, Les Misérables turned in an extremely modest profit and put an end to any further attempts to promote the 43-year-old Rennie as a future star. He was, however, launched on a thriving career as a top supporting actor. He co-starred with Jean Simmons in the 20th Century-Fox epic The Robe (Henry Koster, 1953) and also appeared in its sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators (Delmer Daves, 1954). Rennie was billed fourth and third, respectively, playing the Apostle Peter, who provides affirmation in the new faith, as Jean and Richard Burton become martyrs for Christianity. The final film that cast Michael Rennie with Jean Simmons was Desiree (Henry Koster, 1954), with Marlon Brando as Napoleon. As French Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, who becomes King Charles XIV John of Sweden, Rennie marries Jean's Désirée, but her true love always remains with Napoleon. His career began to decline, film opportunities were less appealing and gradually he slipped away from cinema screens. Among his film roles were The Rains of Ranchipur (Jean Negulesco, 1955) with Lana Turner, and The Lost World (Irwin Allen, 1960), the adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tale of a jungle expedition that finds prehistoric monsters in South America. In 1959, Rennie became a familiar face on television, taking the role of soldier of fortune Harry Lime in 76 episodes of The Third Man (1959-1965), a British-American syndicated TV series very loosely based on the character previously played by Orson Welles.

During the 1960s, Michael Rennie continued his television career, with guest appearances on such series as The Barbara Stanwyck Show (1961), Route 66 (1961); Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1962); Perry Mason (1963), Bonanza (1965); Lost in Space (1966); Batman (1966; as the villainous Sandman); I Spy (1967), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1967) and The F.B.I. (1967-1969). He made his only Broadway appearance in 'Mary, Mary' (1961) playing Dirk Winsten, a jaded movie star. It ran for a very successful 1,572 performances, but Rennie stayed with the play for less than five months. When Warner Brothers cast the film version in 1963, Rennie, along with leading man Barry Nelson and supporting actor Hiram Sherman, were the only Broadway cast members to transfer to the big screen. Debbie Reynolds was given the title role, and Mervyn LeRoy directed the production, which opened at Radio City Music Hall. While the film disappeared from cinemas by the end of 1963, the Broadway version continued for another full year. Rennie moved from Los Angeles to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1968. His final seven feature films were filmed in Britain, Italy, Spain, and, in the case of The Surabaya Conspiracy (Wray Davis, 1969), the Philippines. His final film was the Spanish-West-German-Italian Sci-Fi Horror film Los monstruos del terror / Assignment Terror (Tulio Demicheli, 1970), of which IMDb-user Noel commented: “Edward D Wood Jr ... move over”. In 1971, he journeyed to his mother's home in Harrogate, Yorkshire, at a time of family grief following the death of his brother. It was there that he suddenly died of an emphysema-induced heart attack, two months before his 62nd birthday. Michael Rennie was married twice: first to Joan England (1938–1945), then to actress Maggie McGrath (1947–1960). Their son, David Rennie, is an English circuit judge in Lewes, Sussex. Both marriages ended in divorce. He had a second son, John Marshall Rennie, with longtime companion Renee Gilbert Taylor. Professionally, his son went by John M. Taylor. In 1958, director Otto Preminger named Rennie as a third party to his countersuit of adultery against his wife during divorce proceedings.

Sources: Lyn Hammond (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia, BritMovie.co.uk and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.