At the global premiere of Denis Villeneuve’s hugely anticipated sci-fi epic, Dune, at the Venice International Film Festival on Friday night, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chloe Zhao summed up the overall impression. Zhao, who is a member of the festival’s competition jury this year, hurried through the aisles to embrace the Dune director with a hearty hug and a cry of ‘great!’ as a cascade of bravos showered down on Venice’s Sala Grande cinema. Meanwhile, the audience gave a continuous eight-minute standing ovation.
After a pair of highly anticipated press screenings in the morning and a full-fledged Timothée Chalamet frenzy on the Lido in the afternoon, Villeneuve and his star-studded cast walked the red carpet soon before 7 pm, as the Venetian sun was setting over the horizon. The film’s star, Timothee Chalamet, elicited the loudest screams from the large throng of Gen Z Italians that surrounded the theatre, but the whole cast wowed with its sheer star power.
Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgrd, and Chen Chang were on hand and walked the carpet arm-in-arm with Villeneuve and Chalamet.
Also Read: Mumbai court rejects actor Armaan Kohli’s bail plea in drugs case
Due to Sala Grande’s regular seating capacity of 1,200 had been lowered by half as a COVID precaution, those in Venice who were lucky enough to get one of the extremely limited seats to the screening were treated to an unusually large and comfortable premiere experience. The audience inside, dressed in black tie and masks, gathered in for Villeneuve’s two-hour and 35-minute immersive experience of the 1965 Frank Herbert sci-fi classic.
Dune, produced by Legendary Entertainment and Warner Brothers and touted as Part 1 of a planned two-chapter franchise starter, opens in European cinemas on September 15 and in theatres and on HBO Max on October 22 in the United States.
Post Your Comments