Next week, the selection committee at the Venice Film Festival will pull back the curtain on their picks for this year’s program, but as anyone attuned to the festival circuit already knows, the wild speculation that comes first is half the fun. Today, a new report on prospective Venice premieres from Variety has opened the floodgates on the rumor mill, a mixed metaphor that has nonetheless left us with lots of gossip to pore over.

After a Cannes somewhat light on auteur star wattage, a host of name-brand directors will bring their latest work to the Lido this September. Some big collaborations likely heading for an Italian debut include Olivia Wilde‘s Don’t Worry Darling, in which Florence Pugh discovers her marriage to Harry Styles is a lie; Luca Guadagnino‘s Bones and All, in which Timothée Chalamet falls for a comely cannibal; and Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde, in which Ana de Armas plays Marilyn Monroe during the most going-through-it days of the tragic starlet’s life.

The long-dormant director Todd Field is ready to show off his first feature in a decade and a half, the art-world drama Tár starring Cate Blanchett as a genius facing down a major exhibition. Outside of the Competition section, it sounds like this year’s Lifetime Achievement Golden Lion honoree Paul Schrader will share his new film The Master Gardener, which will introduce us to horticulturist Narvel Roth (played by Joel Edgerton).

Netflix is coming out in full force, with the rest of their fall slate tipped to join Blonde in the Competition section. That accounts for Noah Baumbach‘s ambitious literary adaptation White Noise, with Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig as a couple plagued by an Airborne Toxic Event; Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu‘s latest mouthful Bardo, or False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths; and Romain Gavras‘ riotous firestarter Athena, which tracks a protest in France as it spins out of control into chaos.

It’s shaping up to be an especially packed year for the official starter’s pistol on fall festival season, with the cream of the crop surely destined for further play at the Toronto International Film Festival shortly after Venice. And with next week’s unveiling of the full slate, there will undoubtedly be even more to look forward to — viva cinema!