Yesterday, organizers of the Telluride Film Festival surprised folks by unveiling this year’s slate, a full two days before things kick off in Colorado, an interesting move considering past years has seen the lineup kept under lock and key until the last possible moment. But as always, there are a few more tricks up the sleeve of the festival. The official press release noted: “Additional Sneak Previews may play outside the main program and will be announced on the Telluride Film Festival website over the course of the five-day weekend,” with rumors suggested that there might be as many as three movies dropping by unannounced. So, what could they be?
Well, it looks like we can count on Steve McQueen‘s “12 Years A Slave” arriving. As Deadline‘s Pete Hammond notes, Fox Searchlight co-president Nancy Utley is already on the ground (curious, considering the studio has no official titles in the Telluride lineup) while Steve McQueen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o are all slated to give a talk on Saturday afternoon about the movie. And given that previous years has seen Fox Searchlight launch “Black Swan” and “Slumdog Millionaire” at the fest, you can do the math.
Something else to consider: Hammond is hearing that “an Oscar-winning director” will be bringing a movie to Telluride, and sorry, it’s not Martin Scorsese‘s “Wolf Of Wall Street.” Our guess? Ron Howard with “Rush.” While its award season bonafides are still a question mark (we doubt it), it would still be a pretty interesting high profile title to land. But as always, we could be way off.
So what else could play? TIFF opener “The Fifth Estate” and Warner Bros. “Prisoners” are both being rattled around as possibilities, while we’re wondering just what Harvey Weinstein is up to. There is a noticeable absence of any of his movies outside the documentary “The Unknown Known” (which also plays Venice) and considering “Salinger” opens next week, we wouldn’t be surprised if it popped up. Or perhaps an early screening of “Grace Of Monaco,” which is currently nowhere to be found on the fall festival slate, and we can only imagine Harvey will pushing Nicole Kidman for an Oscar.
Lots to consider and we’ll have some answers soon enough…