London Film Festival 2022 opens with Roald Dahl’s… | Little White Lies

Festivals

Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val 2022 opens with Roald Dahl’s Matil­da The Musical

30 Jun 2022

Words by David Jenkins

Two people - a man and a woman - sitting on ornate, plush sofas in an opulent, vintage-style room with brick walls, arched windows, and a chandelier.
Two people - a man and a woman - sitting on ornate, plush sofas in an opulent, vintage-style room with brick walls, arched windows, and a chandelier.
Emma Thomp­son and Lashana Lynch star in one of the first big movie announce­ments of the Autumn fes­ti­val season.

If you can hear a faint rum­bling out in the mid­dle dis­tance, that’s like­ly the sound of movies amass­ing on the hori­zon ready for their fes­ti­val sea­son pre­miers. Although its some way off yet, we can offi­cial­ly log the open­ing of this year’s Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val in our diaries, as the insis­tent­ly-titled Roald Dahl’s Matil­da The Musi­cal will roll out for its world première.

The screen­ing will take place at the Roy­al Fes­ti­val Hall on London’s South­bank, with var­i­ous oth­er screen­ings hap­pen­ing at cin­e­mas all around the UK. The film is direct­ed by Matthew Warchus, who helmed the orig­i­nal stage ver­sion of the mate­r­i­al, but also has chops behind the cam­era hav­ing made 2014’s com­plete­ly delight­ful Pride.

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The film brings back the (no-doubt super­charged for the occa­sion) music and lyrics by Tim Minchin, and stars Emma Thomp­son, Lashana Lynch, Stephen Gra­ham, Andrea Rise­bor­ough and Alisha Weir as in the title role. Last year’s open­er, Jeymes Samuel’s was an absolute blast, so seems as if the LFF brain trust are putting their chips on big, brassy crowd­pleasers as away to cut the rib­bon on the festival.

Roald Dahl’s Matil­da The Musi­cal will open the 2022 BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val which runs from 5 to 16 Octo­ber. It will be released by Sony Pic­tures UK and TriS­tar Pic­tures across the UK and Ire­land exclu­sive­ly in cin­e­mas on 2 Decem­ber 2022. Net­flix will release the film across the world [exclud­ing the UK and Ire­land] this Hol­i­day Season. 

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