THE GREAT GATSBY Will Open The 2013 Cannes Film Festival

Australian director Baz Luhrmann‘s super-extravagant adaptation of The Great Gatsby will open the 66th Cannes Film Festival on May 15th, 2013.

We’ve seen many rumored titles as the opening film, but today we finally have our first confirmed one.

The lavish remake of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous and respected novel will screen at the Grand Theatre Lumiere of the Palais des Festivals, out of competition, as part of the Official Selection.

Originally slated to open this past December, the film is set for a May 10th, 2013 Stateside release and will appear in Cannes five days later.

Lurhmann is no stranger to the festival as his Moulin Rouge! opened Cannes in 2001, too.

Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan also star in Luhrmann’s version of the 1925 novel with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, of course. The 3D film also stars Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan, and even Jay-Z, who penned the score for the film .

Luhrmann had this to say:

It is a great honor for all those who have worked on The Great Gatsby to open the Cannes Film Festival. We are thrilled to return to a country, place and festival that has always been so close to our hearts, not only because my first film, Strictly Ballroom, was screened there 21 years ago, but also because F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote some of the most poignant and beautiful passages of his extraordinary novel just a short distance away at a villa outside St. Raphael.”

Cannes runs May 15-26, 2013 and U.S. director Steven Spielberg is head of this year’s jury. Last year’s winner of the coveted Palme d’Or was Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke for the drama Amour.