This year’s Cannes Film Festival, originally scheduled to start on May 12, has been postponed—but hopefully not by too long. This comes from IndieWire, which says the organizers are currently planning to reschedule the event for the end of June, but the likelihood of that obviously depends on a lot of other factors. This postponement follows countless other similar setbacks for the entertainment industry, with pretty much every TV and film project that was in the works being forced to shut down production or delay release dates, not to mention major events like SXSW and E3 that have also been indefinitely delayed.
IndieWire says there are some interesting factors here that make canceling Cannes entirely a difficult prospect, which may have something to do with possibly optimistic potential reschedule date. Apparently, Cannes chose not to get insurance that would’ve covered “outbreak-related losses” because it “would not have covered much” anyway. On top of that, the modern version of Cannes, which mostly started after World War II ended, has never been canceled, so canceling it outright would be a big deal—and that’s without even mentioning all of the important business deals and whatnot that revolve around face-to-face meetings happening at Cannes. So it’s definitely postponed, but it sounds like the organizers will do whatever they can to make sure it’s not canceled.