The 'Avengers' actress will step behind the camera for the very first time to direct 'Summer Crossing', an adaptation of Truman Capote's first novel.

The film, which was announced at Cannes Film Festival, is set in the summer of 1945 and centres on a 17-year-old girl who decides not to go on vacation to Paris with her parents so she can spend the summer with her Jewish valet parking attendant boyfriend.

Johansson said of the project: 'Several years ago I began working alongside the Capote estate and writer Tristine Skylar to adapt 'Summer Crossing', an inspired early work of Truman's which has long captured my heart. Being able to bring this story to the screen as my full length directorial debut is a life dream and deep privilege.'

While the book marked the famous author's first novel, it was unpublished until 2005. Capote is thought to have written the book in the 1940s but discarded it because he wasn't satisfied with it.

The manuscript was later salvaged from a bin by a janitor at a New York City apartment Capote had briefly stayed and following the janitor's death, a nephew discovered the work, resulting in it being brought to light and published posthumously - 21 years after the writer's death.

The film is expected to begin filming next year.

Chaos erupted when a noise witnesses said sounded like gunshots broke out during a crowded evening on Cannes' main thoroughfare.

The incident occurred just before the live filming of French television show Le Grand Journal.

Festival jury members Christophe Waltz and Daniel Auteuil were being interviewed on stage when the incident occurred and were rushed off stage.

Popular British actress Emma Watson was also interviewed shortly before the incident.

Police said the man was being held and nobody was hurt.

An eyewitness told AAP she heard three shots fired, which sparked panic as many people ran to flee the scene.

Another Hollywood star, actress Liv Tyler, was delayed to a promotional visit due to the incident.

It came after jewellery worth $A1.3 million due to be loaned to stars at the festival was stolen from a local hotel in a pre-dawn heist on Friday.

The coveted Palme d'Or trophy was safe, officials said.

The robbery took place in the hotel room of an American woman employee of Swiss jeweller Chopard as she was out for the evening, police said.

A strongbox containing jewels was ripped out of the wardrobe and carried off, they said.

The public prosecutor for the Cannes region, Jean-Michel Cailliau, said the loss was estimated at one million euros ($A1.3 million).

But Chopard downplayed the reported value of the jewels and contradicted police reports that they were intended to be worn by stars at Cannes.

The heist occurred before 5am local time at the Novotel hotel, located about 15 minutes from the festival venue, police said.

It took place shortly after the world premiere of The Bling Ring, a true-to-life tale of a group of wealthy teenagers who burgle the homes of Hollywood celebrities.

Police say thieves broke into the room of a Chopard employee, opened a safe and made off with the jewels.

The robbery took place at the Novotel hotel in the centre of Cannes.

Chopard is one of the official sponsors of the festival and redesigned the festival's Palme d'Or award and each year creates jewellery sets for the mounting the steps ritual.

The 23-year-old actress starred as Hermione Granger in the movie adaptations of the popular wizard book series and while she loved workingon them she is happy to be branching out into different roles.

Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival, she said: 'I'm not trying to run away from it. I'm very proud of the work that I did. I'm just really enjoying having the chance to transform into new roles.

'It's strange for me because Harry Potter seems like such a long time ago. So much has happened over the last three or four years. But obviously it's very present in people's minds and living rooms.'

Emma also revealed she loved working on Sofia Coppola's 'The Bling Ring' because she could improvise her lines.

She said: 'I am used to really having to stick to my lines. Because people really know (the 'Harry Potter' dialogue) by heart. So it was lovely to ad-lib or improvise. It was really special.'

Meanwhile, Sofia spoke out about how impressed she was with Emma's performance.

She said: 'It's interesting to see actors that you see in other films transform into characters that are so different from themselves. It's exciting.'

But the fact there aren't more female directors at the top still irks the Australian-based, New Zealand-born film maker.

Campion was honoured by her peers as she collected the Carrosse d'or at the opening of the Director's Fortnight on Thursday, joining an illustrious list of previous recipients including Clint Eastwood.

The award recognises 'innovative qualities, courage and independent-mindedness' in directing and is the latest feather in Campion's impressive Cannes cap.

She is the only woman to have won the coveted Palme d'or - or best film prize - for her 1993 drama The Piano, while Campion also won the top short film prize with Peel in 1986.

The 59-year-old, president of the short film jury at this year's festival, was given a rousing ovation, humbled by the honour and dedicated it to the many directors and their films which inspired her.

Earlier, she appeared at a packed cinema for an hour-long conversation session in which she spoke at length about her career and most recent work, TV drama series Top of the Lake.

Quizzed about whether the film industry was tough for female directors, Campion said it was a tired issue and 'something that makes us gnash our teeth and yawn at the same time'.

But she said she still found the imbalance annoying and offered words of encouragement for aspiring female film makers.

'Put all your energy into making an amazing piece of work because women can obviously make as good a film as guys,' Campion said.

'Kathryn Bigelow (Oscar-winning director of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty) has shown quite clearly that, even taking on topics like action movies and war films, she can make the best films in the world.'

Campion showed her support for a fellow female director as she attended the press screening of Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring on Thursday morning and she said the industry could be frustrating for women.

'What's very difficult when they come to a festival like Cannes, it's always like 'oh so you're a woman director'. How many guys get 'oh so you're a male director?',' she said.

'It would be lovely if people just said, 'oh you're a director, congratulations on your film'.'

Campion, whose other films include Sweetie (1998), An Angel at My Table (1990), Portrait of a Lady (1996), In The Cut (2003) and Bright Star (2009), is one of only four women to be nominated for the Academy Award for best director.

Top of the Lake, co-created with Gerard Lee and set in New Zealand's south island, has earned critical acclaim since screening earlier this year.

Steven Spielberg, Nicole Kidman, Carey Mulligan and a troupe of 1920s 'flapper' dancers were among those braving driving rain and plunging temperatures on the red carpet on Wednesday.

Dresses billowed in the wind outside the festival palace forcing stars to hang on to their hemlines.

Inside, Spielberg, this year's jury head, appeared touched by an unusually enthusiastic standing ovation, telling the audience that at 66 he was getting 'older alongside the festival'.

Earlier, Luhrmann's high-octane take on the Roaring Twenties classic got a cool reception at a press screening, where it met prolonged silence punctuated by some whistles of disapproval and a smattering of supportive applause.

DiCaprio, who stars as F. Scott Fitzgerald's enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby, also led fellow cast members Mulligan and Tobey Maguire and Aussie Joel Edgerton for a photo call ahead of the grand festival opening.

Other stars expected at the glitzy 12-day movie fest on the French Riviera include Ryan Gosling, Michael Douglas, Matt Damon and Alain Delon.

Luhrmann's Gatsby has left critics in the US and Britain divided on whether it amounts to inspiration or a turkey.

The Australian director's adaptation targets a younger generation who have never seen the 1974 version, which starred Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in the leading roles.

3D effects and a score produced by rapper Jay-Z and tracks from Beyonce and will.i.am provide the core of his eye-catching, youth-friendly pitch.

After its North America premiere earlier this month, the New York Times described it as 'eminently enjoyable' and film website Indiewire hailed a 'guilty pleasure, a swirling audacious piece of cinema'.

But others panned it as superficial and brash.

Rolling Stone was even more blunt, calling the $US100 million movie a 'crushing disappointment'.

Aside from the 'staggering beauty of the costumes, nothing works. The actors are buried in the art direction, along with feeling', it said.

'The film looks as stiff and lifeless as a posh store window.'

Despite the doubts, Gatsby took $US51.1 million at the weekend's US box office, reportedly exceeding distributor Warner Brothers' expectations of between $35 million and $40 million.

The film, which is not in competition at Cannes, opens in Australia on May 30.

The opening festivities in Cannes were rounded off with a gala dinner later Wednesday for 650 people, including Spielberg and DiCaprio, all happy to get out of the unseasonal pounding rain.

At the helm was Anne-Sophie Pic, the only female French chef with three Michelin stars.

Pic, who works at her family's Maison Pic restaurant in Valence in southeastern France, said she was proud to have been chosen along with the two-star chef Bruno Oger.

Spielberg, who was applauded as he entered, was later seen chatting to fellow Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, with the likes of Julianne Moore and Sacha Baron Cohen and French actress Ludivine Sagnier also nearby enjoying the champagne and caviar.

Later fireworks lit up the Croisette seaside promenade in the upscale French coastal resort.

Twenty films are in competition in Cannes for the coveted Palme d'Or prize.

Among the most keenly anticipated films is Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, which the director has said he had trouble getting made because it was 'too gay'.

The film will be something of a swansong for the 50-year-old Soderbergh, who has announced his retirement.

Other big names in competition include the Coen Brothers with Inside Llewyn Davis and Roman Polanski with Venus in Furs.

Amelie star Audrey Tautou, who hosted the opening ceremony, said earlier she discovered she had been chosen as the maitresse de ceremonies by text message.

'The offer threw me off balance a bit. I was immediately touched, but torn between wanting to accept and for two or three days wondering if I could do it,' she said.

'In the end I refused to allow myself to be ruled by fear,' she added.

The festival is also a meeting point for thousands of executives involved in the less visible side of movie-making - script-writing, talent management, technology and film distribution.

Jolie, 37, revealed on Tuesday she carries a defective BRCA1 gene, putting her at high risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.

She had a double mastectomy in February followed by reconstruction with implants in April, Dr Kristi Funk said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Dr Funk treated Jolie at the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Beverly Hills and detailed her care on the center's website. She would not disclose when Jolie learned she carried the faulty gene, which gives a woman up to an 87 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer and up to a 54 percent chance of ovarian cancer.

The actress's mother had breast cancer and died of ovarian cancer, and her maternal grandmother also had ovarian cancer - strong evidence of an inherited, genetic risk of developing the disease.

'This family history would certainly meet any insurance carrier's criteria to cover genetic testing,' Funk wrote.

On the surgery center's website, Fink described Jolie's three operations, which were done through the crease underneath each breast. Jolie's partner, actor Brad Pitt, 'was on hand to greet her as soon as she came around from the anesthetic, as he was during each of the operations', Fink wrote.

On February 2, Jolie had a procedure aimed at preserving the nipples, which usually are removed when a mastectomy is done to treat breast cancer. Half of the skin is lifted from the surface of the breast tissue and a small disc of tissue is taken to be checked for cancer.

The tissue proved healthy and on February 16 she had the two mastectomies. Doctors also took an unusual step: injecting dye to determine which lymph nodes in her arms were draining fluid from the breasts. Those nodes would be most likely to contain cancer if any turned out to be lurking in the breast, Dr Fink explained.

When a preventive mastectomy is done, 'there's a 2 to 8 percent chance' of finding cancer, even though there was no indication of cancer beforehand, Dr Fink said.

On April 27, doctors completed Jolie's breast reconstruction.

It is unclear whether Jolie will have her ovaries removed, although she wrote in her op-ed piece in the New York Times she 'started with the breasts' because they posed the highest cancer risk.

Removing the ovaries is often advised for women with such gene mutations, said Dr Charis Eng, a medical geneticist and cancer specialist at the Cleveland Clinic who had no role in Jolie's care.

'We usually say 'try to have your kids' and then have your ovaries removed by age 40,' Dr Eng said.

It's not possible to remove every speck of breast tissue, but removing the breasts and ovaries leaves very little behind that could develop cancer, so it dramatically lowers a woman's risks, she explained.

Luhrmann's glitzy adaptation of F.Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel was screened for the first time in Cannes on Wednesday before the Australian director and the film's star cast fronted the world's media.

The big-budget movie got a frosty reception at the press screening.

The movie continues to divide opinion among reviewers but Luhrmann is unsurprised and largely unfazed.

He's taken great delight in the fact the movie exceeded expectations by earning a whopping $51 million at the weekend in the US.

But he revealed his greatest satisfaction came when he met one of Fitzgerald's granddaughters in the US last week.

'Something happened the other day that for me has really been the end of the journey,' he said.

'An extremely regal woman came out of the shadows and she looked at me and took me by the hands and said I've come all the way to Vermont to see what you've done with my grandfather's book'.

'You can imagine, I went cold because I've never met her and she's a very private woman.'

She told Luhrmann the author, who died in 1940, would have been proud of the film and also complimented the modern soundtrack, produced by rapper Jay-Z.

'For me, that was about as good as it could possibly get and if we've done anything, that's made it worthwhile,' Luhrmann said.

While the film has won over some film critics in the US and UK, others haven't held back, labelling it over the top and lacking taste.

But Luhrmann has seen it all before.

'I made Moulin Rouge and Romeo and Juliet and Strictly Ballroom, for that matter, I never got one of those big high critic scores,' Luhrmann said.

'Don't get the wrong idea, I'd love it. So if you're thinking about it go for it - don't hold back.

'But I just care that people are going out and seeing it. I really am so moved by that.'

The official opening night screening was to be held later on Wednesday.

Pitt, 49, told London's Evening Standard newspaper: 'Having witnessed this decision firsthand, I find Angie's choice, as well as so many others like her, absolutely heroic.

'I thank our medical team for their care and focus.'

The Hollywood superstar added: 'All I want for is for her to have a long and healthy life, with myself and our children. This is a happy day for our family.'

Jolie, 37, revealed to The New York Times in an article published on Tuesday that she had undergone the surgery after discovering that she had an 87 per cent risk of breast cancer and a 50 per cent risk of ovarian cancer because of a 'faulty' gene.

Pitt and Jolie, often known simply as 'Brangelina', have been an item since they fell in love on the set of Mr Mrs Smith in 2005.

They have three biological children and three adopted children.

The Hollywood megastar couple became engaged in April 2012, but Jolie dispelled rumours last month that they had secretly married.

The '11th Hour' auction at Christie's featured 33 works of mostly contemporary art, much of it created for the event and addressing environmental themes.

The strong result doubled pre-sale estimates, with nine of the works selling for more than $US1 million. Among the main sellers, Mark Grotjahn's Untitled went for $US6.5 million and Zeng Fanzhi's The Tiger fetched $US5 million, both of them doubling their estimates in enthusiastic bidding from around the world.

Most of the proceeds went to environmental protection causes championed by the Hollywood actor's Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

Even after the sale, the haul shot up when an anonymous collector donated $US5 million to match the prices realised for all three tiger paintings featuring in the line-up 'in order to protect tigers,' Christie's said.

'The gifts of many other generous donors totalled $US500,000, generating an overall amount of $US38.8 million,' the auction house said.

DiCaprio, currently starring in Baz Luhrmann's a lavish new production of The Great Gatsby, describes his foundation as 'dedicated to protecting the last wild places on Earth and the critically endangered species that inhabit them.'

A 2013 portrait of DiCaprio himself by Elizabeth Peyton sold for $US1.05 million, compared to its $US400,000-600,000 estimate.

The Hollywood element added even more glitz to the already luxurious atmosphere of a Manhattan Christie's auction room, with actress Salma Hayek joining DiCaprio in the audience.

However, DiCaprio said the world's embattled environment needs far more help.

'Despite the significant efforts of organisations and individuals all over the world, our modern way of life has caused unprecedented devastation to our oceans, our forests and our wildlife,' he said, urging buyers to 'bid as if the fate of the planet depends on us.'

'We are at the 11th hour, we are facing a tipping point of environmental crisis unprecedented in human history,' he said.

The 37-year-old American actress wrote in an opinion piece entitled My Medical Choice', in The New York Times that she had chosen the procedure because she carries a faulty gene that increases her risk of both breast and ovarian cancer.

Jolie, one of Hollywood's best-known faces and the partner of actor Brad Pitt, said that because of this gene, known as BRCA1, her doctors estimated she had an 87 per cent risk of breast cancer and 50 per cent risk of ovarian cancer. Her mother died of cancer at the age of 56, she said.

'Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimise the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy,' she wrote.

'I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex,' Jolie wrote.

She said that on April 27 she completed the three months of medical procedures that the mastectomies involved.

Jolie said her chances of developing breast cancer are now down to five per cent.

Jolie and Pitt have three adopted and three biological children.

'I can tell my children they don't need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer,' Jolie said.

Star Trek Into Darkness, the first Trekkie movie since 2009, has made a quick voyage to No.1 at the Australian box office.

The latest release in the long-running sci-fi series has taken more than $5 million in its first weekend of release.

Star Trek Into Darkness stars Chris Pine who, in his second appearance as Captain Kirk, leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one-man weapon of mass destruction.

The film has displaced last week's box office leader, Iron Man 3, although the superhero sequel has still taken in a healthy rake of more than $3 million to be a clear No.2.

Starring Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow and Australian Guy Pearce, Disney's Iron Man 3 sees Downey Jr reprise his role as Iron Man and the man behind the suit, Tony Stark, whose world is torn apart by his most powerful enemy yet - terrorist The Mandarin (Sir Ben Kingsley).

The Big Wedding comes in third, despite being a big bust with movie reviewers.

A banal storyline has not stopped audiences from flocking to watch the story of a long-divorced couple who pretend to be married still when their family gather for a wedding.

It was the only other movie to crack the $1 million mark over the weekend.

The Place Behind the Pines, about a motorbike stunt rider who robs banks to provide for his lover and their baby, has jumped from ninth to fourth.

Olympus Has Fallen, a hostage drama about a kidnapped US president, is fifth.

For the second successive week, Drift is the only Australian movie in the top 10, though it has drifted from sixth to ninth.

The surfing flick revolves around two brothers battling ruthless bikies to kick-start the modern surfing industry in the 1970s.

Drift stars Sam Worthington, but with no disrespect to the actor, the real star is the surfing footage.

With The Great Gatsby opening the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday and opening in Australia on May 30, eBay is calling it 'the Baz Effect', as all things Gatsby get more listings and sales.

Spokesperson Megan English says there's a huge interest in sales of the book and DVDs like Moulin Rouge!, but the company is also seeing a strong impact on fashion.

'The numbers of vintage, 1920s headpieces and jewellery are really going through the roof,' she told AAP on Monday.

'People are kind of flocking to places like eBay and starting little vintage businesses and really getting a lot of traffic.

'It's been quite phenomenal.'

It's not just in Australia either.

Since February 2011, the amount of people searching for Gatsby-related terms on eBay's global store has climbed.

Searches for the term Gatsby' have increased 112 per cent, Gatsby Wedding Dress' are up 180 per cent and 1920s headpiece' has had a huge 333 per cent increase.

English says she has seen films make trends before, but nothing like this.

'I have to say that I haven't seen it in these sorts of volumes before,' she says.

'Whenever something is bright and shiny, we see it has an impact on eBay but this is definitely a bit of a special case.'

On its second weekend in US theatres, Iron Man 3, starring Robert Downey Jr as the title character, took in $US72.5 million ($A72.17 million), according to industry tracker Exhibitor Relations on Sunday.

Added to its take since it opened last weekend with $US175.3 million - the second biggest box office debut ever - the comic book superhero flick has now racked up a total of $US284.9 million.

But The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo Di Caprio in Australian Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of the literary classic, was a respectable number two, with $US51.1 million in box office receipts in its opening weekend.

The rest of the movies in the week's top ten trailed far behind, with action-comedy Pain and Gain, starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, earning a comparatively paltry $US5 million for third place.

In the fourth spot, romantic comedy Peeples, starring Craig Robinson as a boyfriend who initially fails to impress the tony family of his girlfriend, played by Kerry Washington, took in $US4.9 million.

Not far behind was 42, a biopic about trailblazing black baseball star Jackie Robinson, which made $US4.7 million for fifth place.

The sixth spot, with $US3.9 million, went to Oblivion, the post-apocalyptic action flick starring Tom Cruise, followed by The Croods - a stone-age cartoon - in seventh, with $US3.6 million.

The Big Wedding - a star-studded comedy featuring Robert De Niro, Katherine Heigl, Diane Keaton and Robin Williams - came in eighth place, taking in $US2.5 million.

Mud, a coming-of-age story starring Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon, earned an estimated $US2.4 million, for ninth place.

And rounding out the top 10 with $US802,000 was Walt Disney's 3D fantasy adventure flick Oz the Great and Powerful, which has earned a grand total of nearly $US230 million since it opened ten weeks ago.

The 37-year-old Australian star was left struggling for air when she got tangled up in chains while performing a stunt as a glamorous escapologist in a water tank, after being submerged for two and a half minutes.

The actress told the MailOnline website: 'They had a guy who was off camera, but he was a long way away with a can of oxygen. By the time I realised I couldn't get up and beckoned for him, I realised that I had run out of air.'

The petite star explained that there was an emergency 'kill switch' in the tank, which would have completely drained it in 70 seconds but she couldn't reach it.

She said: 'Luckily, I managed to get free and stay level-headed and got out before it went even more horribly wrong.'

Isla revealed all she could think about was what she was wearing in that scary moment.

She said: 'Not in a swimming costume. No one wants to go in a swimming costume.'

Despite coming out of the incident unscathed, the actress doesn't think she is brave in front of the camera.

She said: 'I don't see myself as particularly brave. I rely on gut instinct to accept a role. If something terrifies me I am going to do it.

'The director (Louis Leterrier) said to me, 'Wow. I've worked with so many actors on big action movies, and you're the only one who's done all their own stunts'.

'I said, 'I didn't know I had a choice'. I thought you just had to get on with it. It's the Australian way.

'I'm willing to pull a bad face, and to sweat a bit.'

The director was keen to embody the character before taking on the latest big-screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel in order to get a feel for the 1920s era.

He said: 'I tend to get into character during filming so I started buying pink suits (worn by Jay Gatsby) three years ago to get an idea of the right colour pink. The costumes are the result of an extraordinary collaboration between Catherine (Martin) and Miuccia Prada; it's one of the great joys of the movie.

'Miuccia is a very old friend of mine, and she did the first suits for Leonardo DiCaprio in 'Romeo + Juliet'. What we share with Miuccia is she takes old classical things, which were once modern but are now seen as clich?d, turns them on their heads and reinvents them in a way so they're refreshed and renewed.'

Luhrmann was 'shocked' when he realised how accurate the ensembles were, compared to the originals, and noted how many of the designs are still fashionable today.

He added to Stylist magazine: 'What's shocking from our research is how similar the fashion and the aesthetic from then is to what we like to wear right now. Images from La Croisette, Cannes during the time the Fitzgeralds were hanging out in the Cote d'Azur show the rage for stripes, and the whole nautical look is still very current.

'There was a revolution taking place, where mothers, whose dresses were down to their ankles, were taking their daughters to court for wearing what they perceived to be underwear.'

The next instalment of the science fiction saga will continue its tradition with scenes being shot in various locations when production begins in 2014.

Lucasfilm and British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne have reached an agreement over the filming of the first movie in the highly anticipated third trilogy of the series.

In a statement, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said: 'We've devoted serious time and attention to revisiting the origins of 'Star Wars' as inspiration for our process on the new movie, and I'm thrilled that returning to the UK for production and utilising the incredible talent there can be a part of that.'

Chancellor Osborne said: 'I am delighted that Star Wars is coming back to Britain ... the announcement that the next Star Wars film will be shot and produced in the UK is great news for fans and our creative industries.'

The news follows reports scenes will be filmed in Scotland, with its 'stunning scenery' described as a perfect fit for depicting 'mountainous planets'.

A source had revealed: 'Location bosses feel Scotland possesses stunning scenery perfect for movie backdrops.

'They will look great on the big screen, and the rock formations will replicate the perception of mountainous planets.'

The film - directed by 'Star Trek Into Darkness' boss J.J. Abrams - will also see the return of original cast members Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) and Harrison Ford (Han Solo).

RadarOnline.com says the star was due in Perth for a charity event on Sunday, but has had to leave.

Preston wasn't due to give birth to the baby boy, who they've already named Benjamin, for another three weeks.