The Great Gatsby Set to Open the Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes Film Festival organizers announced earlier today that Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (2013) will open the prestigious event on May 15th. This is only the second 3D film to start the festival.

Luhrmann's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, and Joel Edgerton. The film, which is distributed by Warner Brothers, is set to open in theaters across the United States on May 10th.

The Great Gatsby follows Fitzgerald-like, would-be writer Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) as he leaves the Midwest and comes to New York City in the spring of 1922, an era of loosening morals, glittering jazz and bootleg kings. Chasing his own American Dream, Nick lands next door to a mysterious, party-giving millionaire, Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) and across the bay from his cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and her philandering, blue-blooded husband, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton). It is thus that Nick is drawn into the captivating world of the super rich, their illusions, loves and deceits. As Nick bears witness, within and without the world he inhabits, he pens a tale of impossible love, incorruptible dreams and high-octane tragedy, and holds a mirror to our own modern times and struggles.

Note: Jack Clayton's The Great Gatsby (1974), starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, and Bruce Dern, will be available on Blu-ray on April 23rd. See our listing here.