CANNES, France — The median age of the crowds along the Croisette dropped by about 20 years Monday night when the Cannes Film Festival held a gala premiere for HBO's upcoming, rumor-plagued series "The Idol."
It's not the first television series to debut at Cannes, but it is certainly the oddest. In 2017, festival director Thierry Frémaux reversed a long-held position that film fests are only for movies, inviting Jane Campion and Ariel Kleiman's "Top of the Lake: China Girl" and David Lynch's "Twin Peaks: The Return" to premiere outside competition.
Campion and Lynch, both past winners of the Palme d'Or, had history with the festival, as did Olivier Assayas, who five years later brought his series "Irma Vep" to Cannes, where he had debuted his 1996 film of the same name.
