There may be hope for the Cannes film festival attendees and the movie industry in general as the date of the festival has now been set for early July.
This will be the first major film festival that will be 'live'. After a year of virtual film fests, the prospect of celebrating great filmmaking sounds fantastic. Most festival attendees, be they distributors, filmmakers, actors, agents, producers, and buyers believe that even if the pandemic is not over by July, with the vaccines the lockdowns and group restrictions will be behind us.
This news of a July festival is very positive for the film buyers. The normal (live) May festival was not in the cards. With the whole film industry in turmoil, a bit of normalcy at the biggest film market in the world is great.
The July reschedule is reassuring because it's a delay that's not too long and therefore won't impact the commercial life of films but long enough not to disrupt the whole endeavor. To most, the date change was a huge relief.
There are many distributors with movies waiting to be released once cinemas reopen fully. They have to clear up their slate of overdue releases. The ideal game plan for a distributor is to use Cannes as a launchpad for new films to either streamers or cinemas.
