The Cannes Film Festival competition line-up was announced several weeks ago, and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood wasn’t part of the announcement. The Cannes organizers said that Tarantino hadn’t completed the edit and postproduction yet, but they were leaving the door open for the film to be added at the last minute. It’s especially important for the Cannes organizers this year, the 25th anniversary of the Cannes premiere of Pulp Fiction. Cannes loves QT and QT loves Cannes. So QT worked nonstop and completed his film. Now it will premiere (likely out of competition?) at Cannes:

Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is officially headed to the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. Though there were fears Tarantino wouldn’t be able to finish the film in time, the festival announced the movie’s inclusion on Thursday and confirmed that the filmmaker and his stars will make an appearance at the premiere.

The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio, 44, as actor Rick Dalton, while Brad Pitt, 55, plays his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth. The two are struggling with a changing Hollywood landscape at the height of hippy Hollywood, all exemplified by Dalton’s next door neighbor Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie, 28.

[From People]

I imagine Brad, Leo, Margot Robbie and many others will clear their schedules to go to Cannes for several days for this. But here’s something interesting: Brad Pitt was supposed to be in the middle of promotional tour for Ad Astra exactly at that moment, but now it looks like Ad Astra isn’t coming out this month??

Brad Pitt’s science-fiction adventure movie “Ad Astra” has quietly vanished from the release schedule, three weeks prior to its previously announced May 24 opening date. Fox had originally dated “Ad Astra” for Jan. 11, 2019, then decided in late 2018 to move it back four months to the Memorial Day weekend on May 24. Disney closed the deal for the 20th Century Fox film assets in March and has not done any promotion for the movie since then — no trailer or stills have been released. “Ad Astra” was not included in early tracking numbers released Thursday for the Memorial Day period, expected to be dominated by Disney’s live-action “Aladdin.”

The studio had no comment Thursday. Disney distribution head Cathleen Taff told exhibitors last month at the CinemaCon convention that the studio would be moving around distribution dates on some of its titles.

James Gray directed “Ad Astra” from a script he co-wrote with Ethan Gross. Regency Enterprises and Fox produced in association with Bona Film Investment Company, which will distribute in China. Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Jamie Kennedy, and Donald Sutherland are also starring in “Ad Astra.” Pitt is playing a man who journeys across the solar system in search of his missing father, a dangerous renegade scientist. Jones is portraying the father.

[From Variety]

As much as I want to start screaming about how Brad’s career is in the toilet and no one wants to see his sad-bro-astronaut movies, I genuinely think that MOST of this is just about Disney and their schedule – they want that weekend to be about Aladdin, and they don’t even want to deal with Brad Pitt or his movie during that weekend. But yeah, it’s still not good that this film keeps getting pushed back. If Disney/Fox announces a new release date in August, we’ll know for sure that this film is a stinker. August is one of the “graveyard” time periods for film releases. Of course, if they give it an August release date, that means they might try to enter the film into the Venice Film Festival, which could be fun – Brad in Venice, doing his thing. Maybe he’ll have a new girlfriend by then.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, ‘OUATIH’ posters.