Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical opened the BFI London Film Festival last night (October 5), with BFI CEO Ben Roberts using his opening speech to reach out to the younger audience members.
“I want to speak to our young guests – maybe some of you fancy being in the industry and want to make their own films,” said Roberts on stage at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. He flagged up the BFI’s initiatives for young people, including the Saturday filmmaking club, BFI Film Academy and the BFI Future Film Festival.
“We really want to make sure independent and classic film and TV are accessible as possible,” added Roberts, ahead of introducing the LFF’s “very own Miss Honey” – festival director Tricia Tuttle.
There was no mention of the recent announcement that this will be Tuttle’s last edition heading up the festival. Tuttle took to the stage to pay tribute to Roald Dahl’s creation of the Matilda character, “arguably the best female character in children’s literature”, and Dennis Kelly, Tim Minchin and Matthew Warchus’ stage musical, describing it as “the most beloved musical of the millennium”.
“It couldn’t feel more relevant,” she reflected on the Matilda story’s message. “If you grin and bear it and let the bullies win, then nothing will change.”
Tuttle and Roberts were joined on stage by the film’s young cast, plus Emma Thompson (Miss Trunchbull), Stephen Graham (Mr Wormwood), Sindhu Vee (Mrs Phelps) and Lashana Lynch (Miss Honey), as well as the producers, Working Title’s Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, John Finn and Luke Kelly, plus the film and musical’s director Warchus, writer Kelly and composer Minchin.
The feature is being released in UK and Ireland cinemas by Sony on November 25 at over 700 sites, and by Netflix in the rest of the world. Fellner’s comment that the film would be released “only in cinemas in the UK” was met with rapturous applause.
Netflix will release the film in the UK in summer 2023.
LFF runs until October 16, with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery closing the festival.
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