Nail-Biter: Big Venice Premieres in Suspense Over SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreements

Sofia Coppola’s new film about Priscilla Presley is earning rave reviews.

The tears flowed for Priscilla Presley following the world premiere of Sofia Coppola’s biopic, “Priscilla”, in Venice on Monday.

Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla got a rousing response at its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Monday evening. The pic, a biopic of Priscilla Presley, who was in attendance for the move based on the memoir she co-authored, scored a 7-minute, 45-second ovation.

Priscilla Presley was all shook up at the Venice Film Festival premiere of “Priscilla.” The subject of Sofia Coppola’s drama wiped away tears from her face on Monday night in Italy as the audience on the Lido exploded in a 7-minute standing ovation for the A24 indie film. Coppola and Presley attended the premiere alongside Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, who star as Priscilla and Elvis. The actors were granted a SAG-AFTRA waiver to promote the film amid the strike.

Jacob Elordi towers over Cailee Spaeny at the premiere of Priscilla during the 2023 Venice Film Festival.

The devil is in the details. Pink-nailed toes scrunching on a pink carpet; a packet of false eyelashes; piles of chips in a Vegas casino; the pills. Always the pills: squeezed in a palm that opens to reveal its little white prize; lined up in bottles on the bedside table; slipped into a pocket on the way to school. “Maybe the pills are too much,” ventures Priscilla Beaulieu to her boyfriend Elvis Presley, after one of his flares of temper where she just manages to dodge his fist. “I have doctors looking after me,” he growls. “I don’t need a second opinion.”

The most powerful aspect of Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” premiering in Competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is in the title: to focus on Priscilla Presley, née Wagner, formerly Beaulieu, is to show a side of a marriage and of the King himself less familiar than and in some ways different from the romantic popular legend. But Coppola’s film does much more than simply show us the facts of how a fourteen-year-old girl gets to become the girlfriend and then wife of one of the biggest artists of all time.

Fremantle kicked off its presence at the Venice Film Festival with a bang this year with the announcement of its new €150M ($162.7M) Scripted Fund forged in partnership with Israel-based IBI Investment House. 

Jacob Elordi is getting ready for the premiere of his new movie.

When Andy Kaufman passed away in May 1984, it was the final full stop in a life that seemed to be endlessly self-regenerating. Or was it? Rumors that this was another of his bizarre stunts were rife at the time, so much so that one of the mourners at the comedian’s funeral poked the body that lay in the casket to see if it would move.

The Venice Film Festival began August 30 with opening-night movie , an Italian World War II drama, kicking off a lineup for the venerable fest’s 80th edition that includes world premieres of Michael Mann’s Ferrari, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, David Fincher’s The Killer, Ava DuVernay’s Origins, and new films from lightning-rod directors Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Luc Besson.

We’re back, Insiders. Jesse Whittock here. After a week away, we’ve got you covered for all the big news as festival season gears up once again. We’ve been mob-handed in Venice while diligently covering all the major TV and film news around the world. Let’s begin…

Caleb Landry Jones hits the red carpet with longtime girlfriend Katya Zvereva for the premiere of Dogman during the 2023 Venice Film Festival on Thursday (August 31) in Italy.

Michael Mann’s Ferrari received a 7 1/2-minute standing ovation Thursday night after the lights went up on the film’s world premiere screening at the Venice Film Festival.

Venice Film Festival, Adam Driver and Michael Mann officially kicked off awards season with the world premiere of their racing drama “Ferrari,” which debuted in competition. The packed house at the Sala Grande Theatre showered Drive and Mann with a six-minute-standing ovation. Driver fought back tears at the tragic conclusion of the film.

Michael Mann would seem a perfect fit for a biopic of Italian motorsports legend Enzo Ferrari, himself being a master technician and a director working at the high end of his commercial craft. The result, though, is a strangely tame beast, an introspective look at an in-between moment in its subject’s life, when his business hit the rocks, his marriage all but imploded and a series of fatal accidents kept his name in the papers for all the wrong reasons.

Watching Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” one may wonder whether it’s even possible to make a film about an Italian figure and have it not be at least 80% about style. An admittedly rather inane thought, but one made a little more legitimate by the central presence of Adam Driver as the titular Enzo Ferrari.

The Venice Film Festival is now underway, albeit without a lot of actors on the Lido thanks to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. But Variety reports that “Ferrari” star Adam Driver is at the festival to support Michael Mann‘s latest film (as it’s not part of the AMPTP), and he didn’t hold back about certain companies refusing to meet guild demands.

Adam Driver is speaking out about the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes.

EXCLUSIVE: Caleb Landry Jones has built an eclectic resumé since he first appeared as Boy on Bike in 2007’s No Country for Old Men. His diverse credits include X-Men: First Class, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Get Out and Nitram, Justin Kurzel’s 2021 mass murder drama which earned Landry Jones a Best Actor prize in Cannes.