Jenna Ortega swapped Wednesday Addams' deadpan for something stranger Saturday, walking the red carpet at the 21st Rome Film Festival to promote "Klara and the Sun," the Taika Waititi-directed adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel in which she plays the title role — an artificial companion built to care for a sick child. Italian outlets reported she appeared alongside Waititi himself, with the festival's lineup that day also drawing Julianne Moore, Naomi Watts, Kim Kardashian and Jesse Eisenberg, in Rome for his own film "The Debut."

A Movie That Took Years to Reach Theaters

"Klara and the Sun" has had an unusually long road. Sony shelved the finished film for more than a year before locking in an Oct. 23 U.S. release — just six days after Saturday's Rome premiere — with Den of Geek noting the film finally got pulled off the shelf after Waititi's international festival push built momentum. German audiences will have to wait a bit longer, with cinemas there not opening the film until Oct. 29. Ortega's co-stars in the adaptation include Amy Adams, Natasha Lyonne and Steve Buscemi, rounding out a cast built around Ishiguro's melancholy near-future fable about love, mortality and what a machine can and can't replace.

For Ortega, the role is a sharp turn from the genre work that made her a star. Having built her name on "Wednesday" and the "Scream" franchise, the 23-year-old has spent this year leaning into prestige festival fare, and Rome organizers slotted "Klara" alongside heavyweight company: the festival's same day also featured the premiere of the ensemble series "All's Fair."

Not everyone who has seen the finished film is as taken with it as Saturday's carpet suggested. In a separate newsroom's early look at the finished cut, critics were considerably less warm than the festival crowd, finding Waititi's tonal choices at odds with the novel's quiet dread — a preview of the reviews Ortega and company will be facing when wider audiences get their first look next week.

Festival organizers said red-carpet access remained tightly controlled given the star wattage on hand, with Rome's Auditorium Parco della Musica drawing crowds through the evening. The film opens in U.S. theaters Friday.