Variety celebrated director Olivia Wilde with a cocktail party at the posh Danieli Hotel in Venice on Sunday night, an hour before the hotly anticipated Sept. 5 world premiere of “Don’t Worry Darling” on the Lido.
Wilde, who is presenting her second feature as a director at the festival, graces the cover of Variety’s Venice issue, which is now on newsstands. Variety’s co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh noted that it is the magazine’s first dedicated Venice magazine issue.
“There was no better subject than Olivia,” Setoodeh said. Setoodeh praised Warner Bros., the studio behind “Don’t Worry, Darling,” for its support of theatrical releases.
“Variety is very excited for theatres to be back and for everyone to see ‘Don’t Worry Darling,'” he said.
Other guests included Warner Bros. Pictures Group co-chairs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, as well as New Line President of Production Richard Brenner. Wilde explained why she chose to sell “Don’t Worry Darling” to Warner Bros. after a heated bidding war to Variety’s Elizabeth Wagmeister.
“I wanted to work with a company that would not only allow me to make the film on the scale that it deserved, but also allow me to cast the people I wanted and release it in the way that I wanted — and that was theatrical,” she explained. “The only place that promised me theatrical writing was Warner Bros.”
The film “Don’t Worry Darling,” starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles as a married couple in a dystopian society, will be released in theatres on September 23.
