Where the heck is Superman? That’s the question being asked at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Rumored to have cost upward of $250 million, Warner Bros.' "Superman Returns" is all about invisible here with roughly six weeks to go before its release.
A Warner spokeswoman told me last night that my worries were unfounded.
"Cannes was never part of our plan," she reassured me. “The movie doesn’t open until June 30. And wait ‘til you see it. It’s wonderful. It’s really spectacular.”
She could be right, of course. "Superman Returns" is directed by Bryan Singer, who made the first two “X-Men” movies hits, and has a final screenplay (after many dozens of versions) by the men who wrote those films.
"Superman" not being on the Croisette doesn’t necessarily mean the movie’s bad. There are plenty of other possible reasons, including not wanting to spend the millions it takes to promote a movie here.
But what makes the absence of "Superman" publicity or promotion here so glaring is the presence of tremendous plugs for other upcoming summer blockbusters.
Dreamworks’ “Over the Hedge” and FOX’s “X-Men: The Last Stand” are both screening here and getting parties.
Not only that, Paramount is putting on the dog, as they used to say, for two key Christmas releases: “Dreamgirls” and “World Trade Center.”
In the next two days, the studio will show footage from both films — 20 minutes from the former, 30 from the latter — designed to tantalize both press and distributors. Paramount is well represented here with lots of eager-to-help publicists, too.
But up on the first floor of the Carlton, where many film companies have housed extensive publicity departments armed with press releases and promotion paraphernalia, there is a strangely foreboding sign attached the to the door of a closed suite: “Warner Bros. publicity office will open on Monday May 23.”
This is a little jarring, considering that the festival began two days ago, and that most everyone else in the business has been here since at least May 17.
Where Cannes has always been effectively used to hype huge international commercial releases, Warner Bros. seems to have gone in the other direction and hidden it from the very folks who could give this wildly expensive enterprise a foothold in the market.
