For the first time since 2017, not a single film from a major Hollywood studio is premiering at Cannes. The studios calculated that the costs, social media pile-on risk, and string of recent misfires made a Palais premiere not worth it. Neon calculated differently. The distributor arrives with nine films attached, more than a quarter of the 22 films in competition for the Palme d'Or, and six consecutive Palme wins behind it. [1]

The portfolio is substantial: Ryusuke Hamaguchi's "All of a Sudden," Na Hong-jin's "Hope," and James Gray's "Paper Tiger" are among the competition entries Neon is attached to. [2] That is not a boutique presence. It is a festival strategy executed with what looks like institutional permanence. Neon is not filling a gap left by Hollywood's withdrawal. It built its position over years of acquiring the kind of films the studios declined to touch.

The absence of the studios has a specific industrial explanation. Paramount is mid-merger through the Skydance deal; Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux said Hollywood is reshaping amid the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition. The studios that aren't in legal-merger limbo appear to have made the same quiet calculation: the downside of a high-profile Cannes premiere — a film that disappoints, a talent who steps in it politically, a market where the cost of the trip now exceeds the acquisition value — outweighs the upside. [1] Neon, which operates without a studio's overhead expectations or a parent company's caution, has no equivalent calculation to make. The festival is its natural habitat.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles