‘The Martian’ to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival

TIFF bosses Piers Handling and Cameron Bailey announced a slate of gala and special presentations Tuesday stacked with buzzy titles and big-name directors, including Quebec favourite Jean-Marc Vallee, who will open the fest with “Demolition” on September 10.

The 2015 Toronto Film Festival is one of our favorites fests in terms of star power and films being showcased, so needless to say we were freaking out when TIFF unveiled a short list of some of their upcoming selections earlier today.

This photo provided by courtesy of the Toronto worldwide Film Festival shows Bryan Cranston as screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in a scene from the film, “Trumbo“, directed by Jay Roach. But how many of them will figure into this season’s awards race, what was left out, and what clues has TIFF given us about films that might first premiere in Telluride over the Labor Day weekend? Fox Searchlight has already taken that film off its 2015 awards plate when the label announced it will open next spring.

The movie will premiere at the festival September 10 ahead of its limited release in theaters April. 8, 2016.

Brian Helgeland’s Legend, in which Hardy plays both Kray twins is also on the schedule, as is Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp as notorious criminal Whitey Bulger.

Other anticipated titles include Roland Emmerich’s “Stonewall“, about 1969 riots; Cary Fukunaga’s Netflix drama “Beasts of No Nation”; the Catholic Church abuse scandal film “Spotlight“, with Rachel McAdams and Michael Keaton; and Michael Moore’s documentary “Where to Invade Next“. The film, starring Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro, is about a young Federal Bureau of Investigation agent drawn into a violent war on drugs on the US-Mexican border. Additional announcements will be made in the coming weeks. However the Festival’s spokesmen didn’t reveal anything that wasn’t in the press release.

And since this is the festival’s 40th anniversary, you know they had to go big. “A lot of the great creative artists and a lot of the filmmakers who are showing at the festival are beginning to work in this format”.