Venice Film Festival: Brad Pitt and George Clooney celebrate during ‘Wolfs’ standing ovation
It’s been over a decade since Brad Pitt and George Clooney appeared in a movie together, and the megastars were in a buoyant mood following the premiere of their new film, Wolfs, at the Venice Film Festival.
The pair have been close friends for a long time, which has given rise to one of the longest-running prank wars in Hollywood history, but any sense of one-upmanship was put to the side in favour of busting out a move or two to the sounds of Sade’s ‘Smooth Operator’ once the credits started rolling on their latest collaboration.
Directed by Jon Watts in his first feature outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man franchise since 2015’s Cop Car, Wolfs stars Pitt and Clooney as a pair of veteran fixers who always work alone. Naturally, when they both end up being assigned to the same job, they’re forced to put aside their personal and professional differences in favour of achieving a common goal.
Understandably, given the talent involved, Wolfs was the subject of an intense bidding war when writer and director Watts recruited Pitt and Clooney to not only play the lead roles but produce as well. Every major studio and streaming service in town wanted a piece of the action, which was eventually won by Apple.
The original plan was for Wolfs to receive a wide theatrical release, and it stands to reason the film would have made a decent amount of money when a blackly comedic crime caper starring Pitt and Clooney and directed by the filmmaker behind the multi-billion dollar Spider-Man trilogy with Tom Holland pretty much markets itself.
However, six weeks before its planned September 20 release, Apple decided that instead of rolling Wolfs out to cinemas everywhere, it would be restricted to a limited theatrical run before debuting on streaming seven days later on September 27.
Clooney admitted that “of course it’s a bummer” for Wolfs to be denied a major big screen run, saying, “It would have been nicer to have a wide release,” but even for a star of his magnitude some decisions remain above his pay-grade.
In the grand scheme of things, a four-minute standing ovation is hardly going to make headlines coming out of Venice, but Wolfs and its two focal points did at least provide a major injection of star power, even throwing some dad dancing into the mix to celebrate the warm reception.
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