On Sunday night, an hour before the hotly anticipated Sept. 5 world premiere of “Don’t Worry Darling” on the Lido, Variety celebrated director Olivia Wilde with a cocktail party hosted at the posh Danieli Hotel in Venice.
Wilde, who is unveiling her second feature as a director out of competition at the festival, graces the cover of Variety’s Venice issue, on newsstands now. It marks the first dedicated Venice magazine issue that Variety has done, as the magazine’s co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh pointed out.
“We couldn’t think of a better subject than Olivia,” Setoodeh said. Setoodeh praised Warner Bros., the studio behind “Don’t Worry Darling,” for championing theatrical releases.
“Variety is very excited for theaters to be back and for everyone to see ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ in theaters,” he said.
Ramin Setoodeh and Olivia Wilde at Venice Film Festival (Victor Boyko/Variety via Getty Images)
Variety via Getty Images
Other attendees of the party included Warner Bros. Pictures Group co-chairpersons Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy; and New Line’s president of production Richard Brenner. In an interview with Variety’s Elizabeth Wagmeister, Wilde explained why she chose to sell “Don’t Worry Darling” to Warner Bros. after a heated bidding war for the film.
“I wanted to work with the place that would not only allow me to make the film the scale that it deserved, but to cast the people I wanted and release it in the way I wanted — and I wanted theatrical,” she said. “Warner Bros. was the only place that promised me theatrical in writing.”
“Don’t Worry Darling,” which stars Florence Pugh and Harry Styles as a married couple in a dystopian society, opens in theaters on Sept. 23.