On today’s episode of the Daily Variety podcast, Variety’s Brent Lang and Elsa Keslassy break down this year’s Cannes Film Festival lineup with an emphasis on European auteur filmmakers. And Hollywood’s top litigator Patricia Glaser has a tough talk about social media and the Southern California economy, as she defends embattled Casey Wasserman in a highlight of Variety’s annual Power of Law breakfast event on April 8th.
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As predicted by Keslassy’s report last month, the Cannes lineup is dominated by European filmmakers and indies, with little Hollywood star power. Lang, editor-in-chief of Variety magazine, and Keslassy, an international editor based in Paris, discuss what this suggests about the world of filmmaking and Hollywood’s place within it.
“I think it has more to do with what’s going on in Hollywood right now, which is that studios are obsessed with franchise-type films. The timing of Cannes in May means that studios that are in the Oscar race and are producing more director-driven films are a little hesitant to release their work to the public this early in the year when they need to keep building momentum heading into awards season,” Lang observes. “Elsa is right that the movies that get talked about a lot[at Cannes]aren’t the ones with big stars. They’re more indie, more European. But I think it’s unfortunate that Cannes doesn’t have some big studio movies, because of the economics of Cannes, because whether they’re good or not, they get a lot of attention at the festival. It’s hard for Cannes to have anything like that global presence. You have Tom Cruise on the red carpet, but you don’t have Steven Spielberg. I know they were going after[Spielberg’s new film]Disclosure Day and Christopher Nolan. If you had seen that one movie, you would have seen a completely different conversation.”
Keslassy said the line-up shows a clear trend for France to become a bigger player in financing high-profile films globally.
“We see France really emerging as a creative hub for the industry, but also as a funding hub, because there’s a lot of subsidies in France. There’s a lot of producers, distributors and agents in France who are seriously scouting the world, looking for the next gem and supporting writers,” she says. “So we’re really seeing it taking shape, the Joachim Trier film ‘Sentimental Value’. ‘The Secret Agent,’ the Jafar Panahi-directed film (‘It Was Just an Accident’ in 2025) – all of those films were financed by France. This year, three foreign film directors will be participating. László Nemeth, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, and Jafar Panahi are all making the film in French with a French cast. I think that’s a really big trend. ”
Variety’s Power of Law breakfast on April 8 was an SRO event attended by many of the dozens of lawyers featured in this year’s Legal Impact Report. Patricia Glaser, a veteran litigator who often finds herself in the middle of numerous major disputes, was this year’s Power of Law Career Achievement recipient.
Mr. Glaser had much to say about social media, Southern California’s economy and political leadership, and provided a strong defense of Casey Wasserman, who faces the fallout from his relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell and the fact that his communications with her from 2003 are included in the FBI’s extensive Epstein Files database.
Glaser was asked to respond to comments made by filmmaker Paul Feig earlier in the event in a conversation with Variety’s Matt Donnelly about the state of local business in Hollywood. “I think those huge deals are over,” Feig flatly declared during a lively conversation about how to navigate the theatrical and streaming markets for crowd-pleasing movies. The conversation will be featured in full on the April 10 episode of Daily Variety’s companion interview podcast, Strictly Business.
Mr. Glazer agreed with Mr. Feig, saying the film and television business is shrinking. But payday opportunities out there are more nuanced, she says.
“If you’re a very successful TV producer, all of a sudden you’re guaranteed three episodes instead of 12 or 24, and that completely changes the way people look at production and whether they want to continue working,” Glaser said. “I talked to a friend of mine who is a very famous producer, and he said it might not be worth it to do three episodes on something like Amazon, because a lot of these deals don’t have a backend, so it’s a lot of work and you don’t get paid as much. So that’s the way it is. But will Tom Cruise continue to get a lot of attention? In my opinion, of course.”
(Photo: May 24, 2025, Closing Ceremony of the 78th Cannes Film Festival)
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