‘The Magnificent Seven’ Remake to Open 2016 Toronto Film Festival

I can’t think of a better place, or a better crowd for the film’s world premiere,” Fuqua told a Toronto press conference on Tuesday via video. The filmmaker earlier brought Training Day (2001) and The Equalizer (2014) to Toronto for launches.

Fuqua’s classic Western drama from MGM and Columbia Pictures features outlaws, bounty hunters and hired guns and also stars Ethan Hawke, Peter Sarsgaard, Haley Bennett and Vincent D’Onofrio.

“Fuqua has delivered an exciting character-driven film on a grand scale, while putting his own unique spin on the genre making for a thrilling opening night,” Toronto director and CEO Piers Handling said in a statement about the Village Roadshow Pictures co-production, co-financed with Sony Pictures.

Meanwhile, The Edge of Seventeen, Kelly Fremon Craig’s directorial debut, snagged the plum closing-night slot. Produced by James L. Brooks, the comedy drama follows Steinfeld as a high school junior at peak awkwardness when her older brother (Blake Jenner) starts dating her best friend (Haley Lu Richardson).

The festival on Tuesday also unveiled another 17 movies scheduled to receive gala treatment this year at Roy Thomson Hall, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ryan Gosling, Mark Wahlberg, Gerard Butler, David Oyelowo, Lupita Nyong’o and Rooney Mara among those set to walk the red carpet in Toronto.

All the gala titles are world premieres, except for two films getting a Nov. 11 award-season release: Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, a sci-fi drama starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner from Paramount and set for a Canadian premiere, suggesting a Telluride bow; and Jeff Nichols’ interracial drama Loving, which stars Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga and debuted in Cannes before coming over for a North American bow.

Oliver Stone’s biopic Snowden, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the NSA whistleblower, will debut at Roy Thomson Hall before getting its European premiere in San Sebastian. Other gala titles to get first looks in Toronto include the Peter Berg-directed Deepwater Horizon, the Gulf of Mexico disaster drama starring Mark Wahlberg; the Gerard Butler-starring family drama The Headhunter’s Calling, helmed by Mark Williams; Disney’s Queen of Katwe, directed by Mira Nair and starring David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong’o; and LBJ, the Rob Reiner-helmed film with Woody Harrelson playing former president Lyndon Johnson and also starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bill Pullman and Richard Jenkins.

Roy Thomson Hall also will host two pop music-inspired films: The Rolling Stones Olé Olé Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America, where director Paul Dugdale captured the Havana gig for the Stones’ America Latina Ole tour, and the Justin Timberlake concert film JT + The Tennessee Kids, helmed by Jonathan Demme and featuring a closing performance for the 20/20 Experience World Tour in Las Vegas.

Toronto is also giving the red-carpet treatment to The Weinstein Company’s Lion, from director Garth Davis and starring Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel; A Monster Calls, starring Felicity Jones and helmed by J.A. Bayona; Katherine Dieckmann’s U.S. deep South drama Strange Weather, starring Holly Hunter; and Jim Sheridan’s The Secret Scripture, toplined by Rooney Mara, Theo James and Jack Reynor.

Elsewhere, TIFF will give two U.K. films the gala treatment: the rom-com Their Finest, starring former Bond girl Gemma Arterton and Sam Clafin and directed by Lone Scherfig; and London Film Festival opener A United Kingdom, the Amma Asante-helmed drama starring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike. The festival also will screen the French drama Planetarium, writer/director Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central) and star Lea Seydoux’s second collaboration, and Bronwen Hughes’ The Journey Is the Destination, a drama about slain photojournalist Dan Eldon toplined by Maria Bello.

TIFF director Handling and artistic director Cameron Bailey on Tuesday also announced 48 special presentations sidebar titles, including a host that bowed in Sundance and Cannes. These include a North American bow for Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, which stars Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal; Nate Parker’s slave rebellion drama The Birth of a Nation, the Sundance hit that reaches theaters on Oct. 7; Ewan McGregor’s directorial debut American Pastoral, based on the Philip Roth novel and starring Dakota Fanning and Jennifer Connelly; Paul Verhoeven’s French-language drama Elle, starring Isabelle Huppert and landing here for a North American bow after Cannes; and Venice opener La La Land, a musical from Damien Chazelle starring Emma Stone, Ryan Goslin and John Legend.

The special presentations section also includes a North American premiere for Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, starring Adam Driver as a New Jersey bus driver and which bowed in Cannes; a world premiere for Christopher Guest’s Mascots, which reteams Fred Willard, Parker Posey, Bob Balaban and Harry Shearer in a comedy about sport mascots; Lifetime’s Paris Can Wait, starring Diane Lane and Alec Baldwin and directed by Eleanor Coppola; Andrea Arnold’s Cannes winner American Honey, starring Sasha Lane and Shia LaBeouf and set for a North American bow; Vikram Ghandi’s Barry, which will receive a world bow as it portrays a young Barack Obama as a college student in 1981 New York City and stars Devon Terrell and Anya Taylor-Joy; Ben Younger’s Bleed for This, with Miles Teller as pro boxer Vinny Pazienza and Aaron Eckhart as his trainer; and a world premiere for first-time director Alex Lehmann’s Blue Jay,

The section also includes a North American bow for Werner Herzog’s volcano disaster film Salt and Fire, which debuted in Shanghai and stars Michael Shannon and Gael Garcia Bernal; Susan Johnson’s Carrie Pilby, toplined by Bel Powley, Jason Ritter and Nathan Lane; and world premieres for writer-director Onur Tukel’s black comedy Catfight, starring Sandra Oh, Anne Heche and Alicia Silverstone, and Mick Jackson’s Holocaust courtroom drama Denial, led by Rachel Weisz and Timothy Spall.

TIFF also booked into the special presentations sidebar world premieres for George Nolfi’s Birth of the Dragon; Pete Travis’ City of Tiny Lights, starring Penny Dreadful actor Billie Piper; and a North American bow for Thomas Vinterberg’s The Commune, which competed in Berlin. There’s also a North American premiere for Nick Hamm’s The Journey, starring Colm Meaney as Sinn Fein politician Martin McGuinness and Timothy Spall as the late Sir Ian Paisley; a world debut for Nick Cannon’s King of the Dancehall; and a world premiere for Garth Jennings’ animated musical Sing, voiced by Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane and Scarlett Johansson.

Other world premieres in Toronto include Adam Smith’s Trespass Against Us, starring Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson; Chinese director Cheng Er’s The Wasted Times, starring Zhang Ziyi and Ge You; Feng Xiaogang’s I Am Not Madame Bovary, also from China and starring Fang Bingbing; French helmer Arnaud des Pallieres’ Orphan, headlined by Gemma Arterton and Adele Haenel; and Juan Carlos Medina’s The Limehouse Golem, starring Bill Nighy and Olivia Cooke.

The Toronto International Film Festival, which will make additional lineup announcements in the coming weeks, is set to run Sept. 8-18.