Toronto’s Artistic Director Cameron Bailey says any title expecting screen space on the festival’s opening weekend must deliver a world or North American premiere. If producers don’t guarantee that, their films will be shunted off to the midweek graveyard of festival programming when much of the international industry and media attention has left Canada.
Bailey, of course, didn’t actually call those 11am Tuesday slots a graveyard, but he’s certainly serious about enforcing Toronto’s rule (which has been in place for some years) and making the US studios deliver what they promise.
