• Rumer Willis, 37, has accused ex Derek Richard Thomas, 31, of “incessant domestic violence in the form of coercive control” during their relationship, which lasted from early 2022 until August 2024, in bombshell court documents filed amid their custody battle over daughter Louetta, 3
• Demi Moore filed a separate declaration in January calling Thomas “aggressive” and stating he “appears to want to dictate and control” Rumer — including allegedly trying to cut off family support
• Willis is seeking primary custody of Louetta and requesting court-ordered drug testing for Thomas; among her specific requests, she asks that he not be allowed to bathe naked with their daughter, calling it “highly inappropriate”
• Thomas denies the abuse allegations and disputes Willis’ request for primary custody; he originally filed for custody and visitation in July 2025

Rumer Willis has filed explosive court documents in her ongoing custody battle with ex Derek Richard Thomas, accusing him of “incessant domestic violence in the form of coercive control” during the two-plus years they were together. The filings, obtained by multiple outlets, detail what Willis describes as a pattern of emotional abuse and controlling behavior that she says left her and their 3-year-old daughter Louetta in a difficult situation, per Page Six.

Willis, the 37-year-old daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, and Thomas, a musician, dated from 2022 until their split in August 2024. Thomas quietly filed for custody and visitation in July 2025. Since then, the legal battle has escalated sharply. Willis is seeking primary custody and has requested court-ordered drug testing for Thomas. She has also asked a court to prohibit Thomas from bathing naked with Louetta, telling the court: “I feel it is highly inappropriate for him to bathe with Louetta naked at her age,” per People.

Thomas has denied the allegations and is contesting the custody arrangement Willis is seeking.

Demi Moore’s Declaration

Demi Moore filed her own declaration with the court in January, describing interactions she had witnessed with Thomas. In it, she said he “appears to want to dictate and control” Rumer, and described his behavior as “aggressive” — including what Moore characterized as an attempt to cut the family off from her daughter. Per TMZ, Moore’s filing puts her formally on record in a legal dispute that has drawn significant public attention given the family profile. Bruce Willis, Rumer’s father, has been publicly dealing with frontotemporal dementia since 2023 and has not been a factor in the proceedings, per Us Magazine.

The post Rumer Willis Accuses Ex of ‘Incessant Domestic Violence’ in Custody Battle Over 3-Year-Old — and Demi Moore Filed a Court Declaration Too appeared first on Cream.

• Boots Riley’s sophomore feature I Love Boosters stars Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, and Demi Moore in a fashion-world heist comedy with sharp political teeth.
• Oscar-nominated costume designer Shirley Kurata sourced looks from thrift stores, SCAD students, and indie designers to build the film’s vibrant, maximalist wardrobe.
• The film opened May 22 via Neon and premiered at South by Southwest, making it one of the studio’s most expensive productions at an estimated $20 million.
• Riley’s signature blend of social satire and surreal comedy takes aim at fast fashion, labor exploitation, and wealth inequality.
• Demi Moore plays the villain Christie Smith — and reportedly went shopping herself to find the perfect character-coded pieces.

Boots Riley doesn’t make movies so much as detonate them. His latest, I Love Boosters, arrives in theaters like a paint bomb thrown at a department store window — loud, colorful, and very much on purpose.

The film follows the Velvet Gang, a trio of girlfriends who steal and resell — or “boost” — clothing to survive in a Bay Area economy that has very little interest in their survival. Corvette (Keke Palmer) is the ringleader, an aspiring fashion designer who’s been locked out of every door the industry has to offer. Sade (Naomi Ackie) is a single mom trying to hold it together. Mariah (Taylour Paige) is, as the LA Times puts it, “airhead-ish comic relief and fabulous at it.” Together, they set their sights on Christie Smith (Demi Moore), the imperious founder of Metro Designer — a fast-fashion empire built, it turns out, on stolen ideas and exploited labor.

The setup sounds like a caper. It plays like a carnival. And underneath all the neon and noise, it’s one of the sharpest things Riley has made.

A World Built in Color — and Chaos

From the moment the film opens, color does the heavy lifting. Each Metro Designer store shifts its monochromatic palette almost scene to scene — a visual metaphor for the trend cycle’s endless churn — while the Velvet Gang exists in explosive opposition: furry cropped bomber jackets, remixed sports jerseys, neon-highlighted wigs, and oversized acrylic accessories that feel like they were assembled with joy and a very limited budget.

That wardrobe is the work of Oscar-nominated costume designer Shirley Kurata, whose credits include the 2023 Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once. When Riley came to her with this script, she didn’t hesitate.

“It was kind of my dream script to be asked to work on,” Kurata said. “I could really do all the fun fashion that I’ve always wanted to do but haven’t had the chance.”

The constraints were real. Shooting ran through fall and winter — not exactly peak season for the yellows and bright greens the story demanded. Prep time was tight. Kurata leaned into it. “We didn’t have a ton of prep time either and a lot was done last minute — but sometimes it works well that way because then you’re not overthinking things,” she explained.

To source the sheer volume of clothing the film required, Kurata scoured thrift stores from LA to Atlanta, pulled loans from young student designers at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, and tapped a roster of indie labels — a jumpsuit with Stegosaurus spikes from LA casual wear brand Big Bud Press, a coat covered in lenticular blinking eyeballs by surrealist LA designer Leeann Huang, a jacket covered in coin purses by London designer Alina Ispas, and a red water spout neckerchief by emerging London designer Selina Kwong. She also drew inspiration from the iconic Japanese street style book Fruits, the Oakland arts scene, and the Instagram account UpNextDesigner.

“I’m a champion for any aspiring designer,” Kurata told The Wrap. “Their work is so fun. You can’t always use them, but this movie I was able to.”

Two Closets Per Character

Building the Velvet Gang’s wardrobe meant building two distinct wardrobes for each member — who they are in the real world, and who they become when they’re pulling a job.

“For Corvette and Sade and Mariah, I had to create what they would wear in the real world, but then also, what they looked like when they were disguised,” Kurata said. “I almost had to create separate closets for each of the characters.”

For Corvette specifically, the clothes needed to feel like something she might have made herself. “There also had to be a resourceful element,” Kurata explained. “One of the tops she wears is made from athletic tube socks, and in the opening scene you don’t get to see much of her bottom half, but she’s wearing a skirt made of a bunch of men’s ties.”

Mariah got a more punk-inflected look, reflective of the Oakland art scene. Sade leaned streetwear — with the suggestion that she might be wearing some of Corvette’s own designs. The group disguises, where all four boosters coordinate their outfits, were where Kurata had the most fun. “There were florals and animal prints and anime raver looks,” she said. “We wanted to do an all polka-dotted theme but we ran out of time.”

The men’s suiting throughout the film does its own storytelling. Will Poulter’s store manager Grayson wears something sharp enough to signal authority but clearly off-the-rack — merchandise he probably bought from his own employer. LaKeith Stanfield’s mysterious character (billed only as “Pinky Ring Guy”) wears zoot suit pants and vintage blazers from the ’80s and ’90s, a deliberate collision of decades that reflects how unknowable he is. “Because you’re not entirely sure what world he comes from we mixed the decades with him,” Kurata said.

Demi Moore Goes Shopping

Christie Smith is the film’s fashion villain, and Kurata built her look as a deliberate inversion of everything around her. Where the Velvet Gang explodes with color, Christie is entirely devoid of it — platinum bob, aviator reading glasses, and architectural power suiting with a slight wrongness to it. A jacket with three sleeves. Asymmetrical cuts. Shapes that feel just slightly off-kilter.

“I studied a lot of prominent female fashion designers and how they dressed,” Kurata said. “Like when you think about a Jenna Lyons for instance — you think of the statement glasses, but there’s also a uniform and a utilitarian-ness to the way they dress. And when you go to fashion shows there’s a lot of people dressed in black and I thought it would be so Christie to be devoid of color, she wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it. There’s something off-kilter about her, so I wanted her attire to be a little bit off-kilter too.”

Moore threw herself into it. According to Kurata, the actress actually went shopping during filming to find pieces she felt were right for Christie. “She got some pieces that she thought were very Christie. They were great,” Kurata said.

On screen, Moore is doing something genuinely special — a villainous victory lap that builds on her career-reviving turn in The Substance. Her Christie Smith is haughty and deluded in equal measure, at one point dismissing the Velvet Gang as “low-class urban bitches” while simultaneously taking pride in the fact that thieves want her clothes. Shoplifting, in her mind, is the sincerest form of flattery.

The Boots Riley Cinematic Universe

Riley’s fingerprints are all over every frame. The filmmaker — rapper, activist, self-described “Marx brother” in a recent New Yorker profile — has built a body of work that consistently finds surrealist ways into serious political territory. His 2018 debut Sorry to Bother You starred LaKeith Stanfield as a telemarketer who discovers his boss is literally turning workers into half-human, half-horse creatures. His 2023 Prime Video series I’m a Virgo followed a 13-foot-tall Black teenager in an alternate-reality Oakland policed by superheroes.

I Love Boosters fits squarely in that lineage. The film’s central MacGuffin — a “magic bag” that functions as either a “situational accelerator” or a “deconstructor” — arrives from a Chinese sweatshop as part of a scheme to circumvent global shipping costs. It’s a sci-fi device that also happens to be a pointed metaphor. The Situational Accelerator transforms its target into a heightened, hyperbolic version of itself. The Deconstructor strips things to their barest essence. Riley, it seems, wants to do both to the fashion industry simultaneously.

The production design leans into the absurdism: Christie’s office building tilts at a 45-degree angle that only she can navigate without stumbling. A giant ball of unpaid bills and parking tickets chases Corvette through the streets like the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Car chases are staged with unabashed miniatures. Stop-motion influencer ghouls — skinless, gun-wielding — appear without apology. The score, by Tune-Yards, is a cacophony of circus oompahs, mouth harps, and kazoos.

“Boosters is agit-prop that prioritizes entertaining the crowd,” the LA Times wrote. “It roils with observations about teamwork, inequality and success, but presents as a spangled, stoner-comedy extravaganza with the moxie to give a Monty Python-esque raspberry to realism.”

Palmer, for her part, is the film’s beating heart. She plays Corvette as a great physical comedian — all graceful flailing and barely-contained ambition — and the camera loves her for it. Eiza González gets one of the film’s most memorable scenes, delivering a dissertation on Karl Marx while vaping. Don Cheadle shows up in prosthetics so thorough he’s genuinely unrecognizable, playing a pyramid scheme huckster named Dr. Jack who has rebranded exploitation as “Friends Being Friends.” Stanfield, meanwhile, smolders like Rudolph Valentino in what starts as a cameo and becomes something considerably stranger.

Fashion as the Message

The timing of the film’s release feels almost engineered. The week I Love Boosters opened, news broke that sustainable fashion brand Everlane was being acquired by ultra fast-fashion giant Shein — a real-world collision of idealism and corporate appetite that could have been lifted straight from Riley’s script.

The film doesn’t shy away from the industry’s ugliest truths: the plagiarism of smaller designers’ intellectual property, the life-threatening factory conditions faced by garment workers, the way fashion that originates in working-class communities gets absorbed and sold back at prices those same communities can’t afford.

“Fashion that happens in our neighborhood is absorbed by the fashion industry, then sold back to us at very high prices — so people figure out how to get the stuff they want with much less money,” Riley said in the film’s production notes. “I was thinking about the economy of that and how fashion and art manifests; how people make and consume art while they’re struggling and how communities work together.”

Kurata sees it the same way. “There is responsibility that we as consumers and we as designers, need to take into consideration. That involves workers’ rights, equal pay, the importance of over-consumption, the environment,” she said. “There’s this widening division of sort of the haves and the have-nots and the one percentile and the rest of the world and it’s only become worse.”

She hopes the film does something about that — or at least starts the conversation. “In a time where they are trying to push AI on us, I hope this showcases human creativity and using real objects and just making it work,” she said. Boots Riley, she added, gave her total freedom — and one particular directive that stuck: “Boots even said it’s OK if it’s a little janky.”

They even had a dress-like-Boots day on set. “But you can’t compete with the legend himself,” Kurata laughed.

I Love Boosters is in theaters now via Neon. It is, emphatically, not for the faint of heart — or the faint of color palette. But for anyone who’s ever felt like the fashion industry was stealing from them, it might feel like the most satisfying two hours they’ve spent in a theater all year.

The post The Fashion Heist Film You Need to See This Summer appeared first on Cream.

• Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters opens in theaters Friday from distributor Neon, rated R and running 115 minutes
• Keke Palmer leads an ensemble that includes Demi Moore, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Eiza González, Poppy Liu, LaKeith Stanfield and Don Cheadle
• The $20 million film — the largest production investment in Neon’s history — premiered at South by Southwest in March before a Bay Area premiere at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater
• Reviews are split: some critics call it irresistible summer fun, others find the comedy doesn’t always land and the third act goes off the rails
• Riley, a self-described communist for 30+ years, made the film as an explicit Marxist satire about fast fashion, workers’ rights and corporate greed

There is no one else making movies like Boots Riley right now. That much, at least, every critic agrees on. His follow-up to the 2018 cult hit Sorry to Bother You is a candy-colored, teleportation-powered, Marxist fashion heist comedy starring Keke Palmer — and it is exactly as wild as that sounds. I Love Boosters, which opens in theaters Friday via Neon, has been making audiences laugh so loudly at screenings that they drown out lines of dialogue. Whether it fully sticks the landing is another conversation. But as a piece of sheer cinematic ambition, it’s pretty hard to look away.

Palmer plays Corvette, a struggling Bay Area fashion designer who supports herself by boosting — stealing designer clothes from boutiques and selling them cheap to people who couldn’t otherwise afford them. She and her crew, the Velvet Gang — Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige) — have built a whole operation around it. Mariah calls it “Triple F”: Fashion Forward Filanthropy. “She knows how to spell philanthropy,” she deadpans. “This is branding.”

Their target is Christie Smith, a billionaire fashion mogul played by a gloriously self-absorbed Demi Moore, who has not only stolen one of Corvette’s designs but runs an empire built on underpaid factory workers getting sick from sandblasting denim. (These are, as the film pointedly notes, all real things.) When Poppy Liu’s Jianhu — a Chinese factory worker who teleports herself to the Bay Area — joins the crew, the film’s second half kicks into a revenge caper that zips through time, space and dialectical materialism with gleeful abandon.

The ensemble also pulls in Eiza González as a vaping, revolutionary-minded retail worker named Violeta, who is literally forced to buy her own uniform out of her paycheck. Don Cheadle, buried under prosthetics and practically unrecognizable, plays a potbellied life coach. Will Poulter is magnificently fussy as a catty store manager. And LaKeith Stanfield — who first worked with Riley on Sorry to Bother You — plays a mysterious figure described variously as a discount brand model with a strange accent and a hypnotizing stare, and, in the Detroit News’s more colorful assessment, a sex demon. Stanfield says Riley pitched him the character before the script was even written: “He just said that it’s going to be a character unlike any character you played, which is true. And that it’s someone that is trying to find a way to connect to others. And this guy has been alive since the beginning of time. And I was like, ‘Oh, this is very interesting.'”

A Feast for the Eyes

Whatever you think of the story, the movie is a visual knockout. Costume designer Shirley Kurata — who brought her Oscar-winning imagination to Everything Everywhere All at Once — goes full maximalist here, decking the Velvet Gang in feathers, satins, silks and avant-garde color while Christie’s boutiques enforce a single color per month (the entire cast garbed in pea-soup green for one memorable sequence). Production designer Christopher Glass (Ms. Marvel, The Jungle Book) and set decorator Lizbeth Ayala (Civil War, Atlanta) round out a below-the-line team clearly operating at the top of their game.

The sight gags are something. Christie’s trendy atelier has a dramatically sloped floor — for aesthetics, presumably — which the designer navigates gamely but Corvette, who’s snuck in, cannot get out of without hilariously sliding backward. Store employees are given exactly 30 seconds for a lunch break, so they sprint from starting blocks. And Corvette, leaving a boutique after boosting a mountain of clothing stuffed under her tracksuit, hobbles out looking like an inflatable parade float on incongruously tiny heels. There’s also a teleportation device powered by Marxist dialectics, villains rendered in stop-motion animation, and a miniature car chase. Riley worked with cinematographer Natasha Braier (The Neon Demon) to make every frame feel as handmade and specific as possible. “For me, I’m heightening contradictions,” Riley says. “That’s also something I bring from music. You can talk all the time about what technically should work, but what matters is making you feel a certain thing.”

The score, by music duo Tune-Yards, punctuates the comedy with an eclectic pluckiness that fits Riley’s world perfectly.

The Man Behind the Movie

Riley, 55, has been calling himself a communist for more than 30 years without apology. He grew up in Oakland, got into activism young, and spent years as a musician — his long-running rap group the Coup released a song literally called “I Love Boosters” on their 2006 album Pick a Bigger Weapon, with lines like “Most of it was made by children in Asia / The stores make money off of very low wages.” The film isn’t a direct adaptation, he says, but they come from the same place.

At $20 million, I Love Boosters is the biggest production investment Neon has ever made. Riley is clear-eyed about what he wants from it. “The world that I hope to see created is one in which the people democratically control the wealth that they create with their labor,” he said during a recent interview, conducted while he was driving from his Oakland home to a San Francisco hotel for a full press day. “Now, why do I want that? That has to do with people. I like people and I think there’s a way that we can get there in order to counter those in power just doing whatever they want to do.”

He’s also been running a college promotional tour since the film’s South by Southwest premiere in March, and figures he’s seen it with audiences more than 25 times. “It’s always like a rock show,” he says. “I’ve been taking it back to the indie music days and just beating the cement.”

The film has drawn some online scrutiny over Riley’s collaboration with producer Megan Ellison, daughter of tech billionaire Larry Ellison. Riley doesn’t flinch. “So there’s no getting out of it. And also, that’s not my goal. That never was part of my goal. My goal is to help create class struggle and help to create this mass militant, radical labor movement.” He’s also been showing up to press events in a rotating collection of oversized hats — six of them, sourced from London shop Uptown Yardie — a habit he picked up around 2022 and briefly considered retiring before reconsidering. “I read a thing with Godard talking about how he had to make himself this character to sell his movies,” Riley says. “And you don’t think about Godard thinking about marketing. And so for me, I was like, ‘I gotta sell this movie. Let me bring the hat back out.'”

What Critics Think

Reviews have landed all over the map, which is probably exactly what Riley expected. The Seattle Times calls it “just the thing for summer” — funny, raunchy, and dressed in a rainbow-bright array of costumes, praising Palmer’s “wise and endearing” Corvette and Moore’s amusingly self-absorbed villain. (One particular highlight: the way Christie hands her chewed gum to her assistant like it’s a gift.) IGN goes further, calling the film “the cinematic equivalent of a song of the summer” and praising it as an improvement on Sorry to Bother You, with Palmer’s performance keeping the wackiness grounded when it needs to be.

The Associated Press is more measured, giving it two and a half out of four stars. That review admires Riley’s imagination and the film’s genuine style-and-substance combination but finds the laughs don’t quite land — “amusing and clever” rather than genuinely funny — and the climax more mind-numbing than rousing. The Houston Chronicle lands somewhere in between: a long, strange trip that’s about 15 minutes too long but still fuses pointed humor with a bold sense of the absurd. The Detroit News gives it a B, calling Palmer “a perfect fit for Riley’s world” and Stanfield’s mysterious energy another layer of bizarro fun.

The consensus thread, even among the more skeptical reviews: this is a film with something to say and a genuinely original way of saying it. In a marketplace full of franchises and IP, that counts for something.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cO3MrHffZDA%3Fsi%3DFpq6M1QWOEo_P8nc

Palmer, for her part, is the reason almost everyone agrees the film works as well as it does. Her comedic timing, her delivery of throwaway lines like “Now is not the time for nuance, Sade!” — she makes Corvette feel real inside a world that is anything but. Riley himself has described her as feeling like she’s “from the future.” After watching her carry a Marxist fashion heist comedy on her back with this much charisma, it’s hard to argue.

The post Keke Palmer Steals the Season in ‘I Love Boosters’ appeared first on Cream.

• Demi Moore is serving on the jury at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 12–23 in France.
• She made her red carpet entrance in a strapless sequin Jacquemus gown, completing the look with Chopard diamonds.
• A polka dot Jacquemus dress at the jury photocall drew equal attention — and a lot of fan love.
• Jury president Park Chan-wook leads a panel that also includes Stellan Skarsgård, Ruth Negga, and Chloé Zhao.
• Star-studded films including Scarlett Johansson’s Paper Tigers and Sebastian Stan’s Fjord are competing for the Palme d’Or.

Demi Moore arrived at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival like she had something to prove — and honestly, two looks in and she’s already winning the week.

The 63-year-old actress touched down in Nice on Monday, May 11, ahead of the festival’s opening ceremony, and by Tuesday she had already delivered not one but two jaw-dropping outfits. Both from Jacquemus. Both completely different. Both completely her.

For opening night, Moore stepped onto the iconic staircase in front of the Palais des Festivals in a strapless, sequin Jacquemus gown that showed off her toned arms and commanded the room. She finished the look with a stunning Chopard diamond necklace and delicate floral-shaped earrings — the kind of red carpet moment that gets screenshotted and saved.

Her stylist Brad Goreski gave fans a behind-the-scenes peek at the ensemble in a joint Instagram video, and the comments section lit up fast. Actress Rita Wilson was among the first to weigh in. “Maybe one of my most favorites dresses on you,” she wrote. Fans piled on: “So stunning and it fits like a glove,” one gushed. “Insane! I am so set for your Cannes moments!” shared another.

Not everyone kept it purely celebratory. Some commenters expressed concern, calling Moore’s frame “extremely thin” and urging her to prioritize her health. “I’ve been a big fan of yours for years, Demi, and I say with the utmost compassion that I hope you take care of your health,” one user wrote. “A lot of people care about you.” It’s a conversation that’s followed Moore since her appearance at the SAG Awards back in March, and one she’s navigated with grace — at least publicly.

The Polka Dot Moment Everyone’s Talking About

If the sequin gown was the dramatic opening act, Tuesday morning’s jury photocall was the playful encore.

Moore showed up to the Palais des Festivals in a strapless polka dot dress — also Jacquemus, from the brand’s Fall/Winter 2026 collection first shown at the Musée National Picasso in January. The dress features a cream base scattered with multicolored dots in red, blue, yellow, and black, a structured bodice, and a voluminous tulip-shaped skirt that hits just above the knee. She paired it with a matching polka dot bag, crisp white cat-eye sunglasses, and white pumps, all from the same French fashion house.

The effect was pure confetti — festive, retro, and a little bit cheeky. For a festival that celebrates cinema with that level of reverence, it was exactly the kind of energy the moment called for.

At a press conference ahead of the festival, Moore got candid about what it means to be here in this role. “My first thought is ‘Me?'” she said with a laugh. “I had such a beautiful experience here a few years ago, and one, just to be surrounded by cinema and the love of cinema, and the joy of diving in and being surrounded by those who share that, just felt like a joy… I feel tremendously honored and super excited. I feel like a little kid playing a grown up.”

It’s a full-circle moment. Moore first came to Cannes in 2024 with Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, the body-horror film that went on to win Best Screenplay at the festival and ultimately earned Moore a Golden Globe for Best Actress. Now she’s back — not as a competitor, but as one of the people deciding who wins.

She’s joined on the jury by writer-director Park Chan-wook, who serves as jury president, along with actors Stellan Skarsgård, Ruth Negga, and Isaach de Bankolé, plus filmmaker Chloé Zhao, director Laura Wandel, writer Paul Laverty, and director Diego Céspedes. Together, they’ll screen every film in competition before the festival wraps on May 23.

Who Else Is in Cannes This Year

Moore isn’t the only one making an entrance. Heidi Klum, a Cannes red carpet fixture known for bringing some of fashion’s most theatrical moments to the Croisette, was also spotted arriving in Nice on Monday and will almost certainly be turning heads on the staircase before the week is out.

Elijah Wood flew in with his wife, Mette-Marie Kongsved, ahead of the opening ceremony, where he’ll present an honorary Palme d’Or to Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson. Sebastian Stan has a film in competition — Fjord, in which he and Renate Reinsve play a couple relocating their family to Norway, set to premiere May 19. And Miles Teller is part of the ensemble behind Paper Tigers, a crime drama starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver that premieres May 16 and is already generating serious buzz for the Palme d’Or.

Nathan Mitchell, fresh off the end of The Boys, is also in attendance, and French actor Lucas Bravo — always a Cannes presence — is expected to pop up at premieres throughout the week.

The 79th Cannes Film Festival runs through May 23. If Moore’s first two days are any indication, the fashion alone is going to be worth watching.

The post Demi Moore Stuns at Cannes 2026 in Jacquemus appeared first on Cream.

• Demi Moore told reporters at Cannes that fighting AI is “a battle we will lose” and Hollywood must work with it instead
• Moore admitted the industry is “probably not” doing enough to protect itself from AI’s risks
• Fellow juror Paul Laverty pushed back hard, calling out “tech bros” and billionaires dictating how society lives
• Moore is serving on the 79th Cannes jury alongside Park Chan-wook, Chloé Zhao, Ruth Negga, and others
• The festival opens with a notable lack of Hollywood films, which organizers tied to ongoing industry upheaval

Demi Moore didn’t come to Cannes to dodge the hard questions. On the first day of the 79th annual Cannes Film Festival, the Oscar-nominated actress — sitting alongside jury president Park Chan-wook and fellow jurors Chloé Zhao, Ruth Negga, Laura Wandel, and others at the Palais des Festivals — went straight into one of the most contested conversations in Hollywood right now: artificial intelligence.

“The reality is that to resist — I always feel that against-ness breeds against-ness,” Moore told reporters. “AI is here. And so to fight it is to fight something that is a battle that we will lose. So to find ways in which we can work with it, I think, is a more valuable path to take.”

It’s a position that’s become familiar in certain corners of the industry — pragmatic, forward-looking, careful not to sound alarmist. Moore acknowledged there are “beautiful aspects to being able to utilize” the technology, and pushed back against the idea that AI poses an existential threat to art itself. “The truth is, there really isn’t anything to fear,” she said, “because what it can never replace is what true art comes from, which is not the physical. It comes from the soul. It comes from the spirit of each and every one of us sitting here. And that they can never recreate through something that is technical.”

But she wasn’t entirely reassuring either. When asked whether the industry is doing enough to regulate and protect itself from AI’s downsides, Moore paused. “I don’t know the answer to that. And so my inclination would be to say probably not.”

Not Everyone on the Jury Is Ready to Make Peace With It

Moore’s measured stance didn’t go unchallenged at the same table. Irish-Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty — known for his long collaborations with Ken Loach on films like The Wind That Shakes the Barley and I, Daniel Blake — was considerably less diplomatic about who’s actually driving the AI conversation.

Laverty pointed to the environmental toll of data centers, calling out the “crisis now in data — affecting sustainability, water and populations.” He argued that the billionaires behind the technology “assume the rest of the world will follow and swallow it, no matter what the consequences are,” and called for transparency and democratic accountability. “I think people are beginning to realize that we should not let these tech bros — billionaires who are, mostly, right-wing libertarians — dictate how we live our lives,” he said.

It’s a striking contrast in tone between two jurors sitting side by side — one urging collaboration, the other urging resistance — and it reflects a divide that’s been running through Hollywood since the writers’ and actors’ strikes that consumed the industry in 2023, with AI protections at the center of those negotiations.

Moore on Art, Politics, and Censorship

AI wasn’t the only charged topic at the press conference. Moore was also asked whether speaking freely about politics can hurt a filmmaker’s career — a question that carries extra weight after the fierce controversy at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. Her answer was unequivocal.

“I would hope not,” she said. “Part of art is about expression. So if we start censoring ourselves, then I think we shut down the very core of our creativity, which is where we can discover truth and answers.”

Jury president Park Chan-wook echoed that sentiment, pushing back against the idea that politics and art are in conflict. “Just because a work of art has a political statement, it should not be considered an enemy of art,” he said through a translator. “Even if we are to make a brilliant political statement, if it’s not expressed artfully enough, it would just be propaganda. So what I want to say is that art and politics are not concepts that are in conflict with each other — as long as they are artistically expressed, they are valuable.”

Moore Returns to Cannes After ‘The Substance’

This is a homecoming of sorts for Moore. She was last on the Croisette with her body horror film The Substance, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination and reestablished her as one of the most compelling screen presences working today. Now she’s on the other side of the table, helping decide which films take home the Palme d’Or.

Her jury includes some of the most respected names in world cinema: Park Chan-wook, fresh off No Other Choice; Chloé Zhao, who won the Oscar for Nomadland and most recently directed Hamnet; Ruth Negga (Loving, Passing); Belgian director Laura Wandel; Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes; Ivorian actor Isaach de Bankolé; and Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård.

The festival itself runs May 12–23, opening Tuesday night with Pierre Salvadori’s French comedy-drama The Electric Kiss and an Honorary Palme d’Or for Peter Jackson. Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux addressed the festival’s notably thin Hollywood lineup at a Monday press conference, connecting the absence directly to industry upheaval — “After COVID, the writers’ strike, which, incidentally, is linked to issues surrounding artificial intelligence, followed by restructuring, mergers, acquisitions” — and the continued rise of streaming.

So even when the AI debate isn’t explicitly on the agenda at Cannes this year, it’s woven into almost everything — the films that got made, the ones that didn’t, and the jury now tasked with deciding what matters most.

The post Demi Moore on AI at Cannes: ‘A Battle We Will Lose’ appeared first on Cream.

• The 79th Cannes Film Festival opened Tuesday in the South of France, running through May 23
• Peter Jackson receives an honorary Palme d’Or at the opening ceremony, presented by Elijah Wood
• Hollywood studios are largely absent this year, with costs and a rocky reception climate keeping them away
• Demi Moore joins Park Chan-wook, Chloé Zhao, and Stellan Skarsgård on the nine-member jury
• Neon has backed the last six Palme d’Or winners and holds a stake in over a quarter of this year’s competition films

\n\n

The 79th Cannes Film Festival is officially underway on the French Riviera, and while the Hollywood machine is notably quieter than usual, the Côte d’Azur is anything but short on glamour. Twelve days of world premieres kicked off Tuesday, with the whole thing wrapping May 23 when the jury hands out the Palme d’Or — one of the most coveted trophies in all of cinema.

\n\n

The opening night belonged to The Electric Kiss, a French period-comedy, and to a moment that had Lord of the Rings fans feeling all kinds of nostalgic: director Peter Jackson received an honorary Palme d’Or. Elijah Wood — who arrived in Nice on Monday with his wife, Mette-Marie Kongsved — was on hand to present the honor to his former director. It was the kind of full-circle moment Cannes does better than anywhere else.

\n\n

Before the first film even screened, arrivals at the Nice airport set the tone. Demi Moore touched down ready for business — she’s serving on the jury this year alongside Oldboy director Park Chan-wook (who serves as jury president), Nomadland‘s Chloé Zhao, actor Stellan Skarsgård, and others including Ruth Negga and Isaach De Bankole. Heidi Klum also made her annual pilgrimage to the carpet, where she reliably delivers some of the festival’s most talked-about fashion moments. Even Nathan Mitchell, fresh off the end of The Boys, was spotted making his way into town.

\n\n

Moore’s connection to Cannes runs deeper than jury duty. Her film The Substance premiered here in 2024, with writer-director Coralie Fargeat taking home the Best Screenplay award. Coming back in an official capacity feels like a full-circle moment for her too.

\n\n

Hollywood’s Quiet Year on the Croisette

\n\n

What everyone keeps talking about, though, is what’s missing. Previous editions have welcomed blockbusters like Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis with open arms. This year, the studio presence is almost nonexistent — the closest thing to a marquee Hollywood moment is an anniversary celebration for the Fast & Furious franchise.

\n\n

Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux addressed it head-on in a press briefing Monday, acknowledging that Hollywood “is reshaping” amid the ongoing turbulence of Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Studios, he suggested, have been either spooked by the prospect of a chilly critical reception or simply unwilling to absorb the expense of flying A-list talent to the South of France right now.

\n\n

“I hope the studio films will come back,” Frémaux said.

\n\n

But the filmmaker lineup this year is genuinely stacked. Pedro Almodóvar brings Bitter Christmas. James Gray unveils Paper Tiger. South Korean director Na Hong-jin, whose previous work has been nothing short of electric, arrives with Hope. Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida, Cold War) has Fatherland. And Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the Japanese filmmaker behind Drive My Car, is back with All of a Sudden. For cinephiles, this is the good stuff.

\n\n

The Neon Factor and the Oscar Pipeline

\n\n

If there’s one company that has quietly turned Cannes into its personal awards-season launchpad, it’s specialty distributor Neon. The company has backed the last six Palme d’Or winners in a row — an unprecedented run — and this year they’re attached to more than a quarter of the 22 films competing for the top prize. The streak could easily continue.

\n\n

The template is well established at this point. Two years ago, Sean Baker’s Anora won the Palme d’Or here before going on to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Last year, Cannes selections including Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, and It Was Just an Accident all carved out significant roles in awards season. The festival has become less of a Hollywood showcase and more of an Oscar incubator — and that’s not a bad trade.

\n\n

The Stars Are Still Coming

\n\n

Hollywood studios may have stayed home, but their talent didn’t get the memo. Over the next two weeks, the Croisette will see Kristen Stewart, Barbra Streisand, Adam Driver, Javier Bardem, Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Rami Malek, Sebastian Stan, and Sandra Hüller, among many others.

\n\n

There’s also a meta layer to all of this that’s hard to ignore. The fourth season of HBO’s The White Lotus — Mike White’s acclaimed series that has become one of the most-watched shows on television — is set entirely around a trip to Cannes. Production began on the French Riviera last month, meaning the real festival is essentially unfolding inside its own fictional backdrop. How much of this year’s Cannes energy bleeds into the show, and vice versa, is going to be fascinating to watch.

\n\n

Park Chan-wook’s jury convenes Tuesday for their first press conference before settling in for nearly two weeks of sequestered screenings. The Palme d’Or winner will be announced May 23 — and if history is any guide, Neon will probably be celebrating.

“,
“category”: “Movies

The post Cannes 2026 Kicks Off With Stars, No Studios appeared first on Cream.