The Toronto International Film Festival has delivered an ultimatum to movie studios: deliver on promised premieres, or get bumped to the back of the fest pack.

The tough new rule, prompted by allegations of rival festivals “stealing thunder” from TIFF for Oscar hopefuls such as 12 Years a Slave, requires all films screening in the coveted first four days of the September annual event be a guaranteed world or North American premiere.

Failure to comply will result in screenings being pushed past opening weekend to the festival’s Day 5 and beyond, typically the least-desirable part of the event in terms of marketing, awards consideration and international press attention. This year’s TIFF is scheduled to run Sept. 4-14.

“For the first four days, from Thursday through Sunday, it will be North American or world premieres only for the festival,” TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey said from Los Angeles Tuesday night.

“Essentially, when we agree to and announce a premiere status, we want it to be real and to stick and not to have any surprises.”

The bold move, which Bailey delivered in person over the past few days to representatives of Hollywood movie studios and talent agencies, was made after months of discussions by him with TIFF Director and CEO Piers Handling and other festival officials.

It’s in response both to aggressive moves by rival fests, especially Colorado’s Telluride Film Festival, and the rise of social media such as Twitter.

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TIFF was miffed last year that its announced world premieres of Steve McQueen’s slave drama 12 Years a Slave, now a leading candidate for Best Picture at the March 2 Academy Awards, and Quebecer Denis Villeneuve’s star-studded kidnap thriller Prisoners, both suddenly turned into also-ran status after Telluride premiered them days earlier.

In these and other cases, TIFF had been led to believe it would have the bragging rights for world or North American premieres, no small matter in the increasingly competitive hunt by festivals for films, sponsors and global attention.

“As a Canadian festival, I have to say I was disappointed that Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners wasn’t going to be a genuine world premiere in Toronto,” Bailey said from Los Angeles Airport, shortly before boarding a flight home.

“It’s a film that I love and had seen early and had invited early. I was also disappointed that 12 Years a Slave didn’t turn out to be a genuine world premiere.”

TIFF lost North American premiere status for Alfonso Cuaron’s sci-fi thriller Gravity, another leading Oscar contender, when it also played first at Telluride following its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, which overlaps with the start of TIFF.

The situation didn’t go unnoticed in the film industry: Variety headlined a provocative story “Can Telluride Continue to Steal Venice and Toronto’s Thunder?,” written by Peter Debruge, its chief international film critic, asking why the two fests “have stood by while Telluride stole their thunder on world premieres.”

Telluride runs for several days over the Labour Day weekend, just ahead of Toronto, and for years it has premiered films ahead of Toronto, such as Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire in 2008.

But TIFF and other fests used to turn a blind eye to it, and still claimed premiere status for films, because Telluride was for decades run like a private club for well-heeled movie lovers, who could afford the steep ticket prices and travel costs to the remote mountain town. Until recently, Telluride also didn’t trumpet its slate of films to the world, announcing them quietly just before the long weekend began.

This all changed in 2013 for the fest’s 40th anniversary, when Telluride added an extra day, opened a large new theatre and began aggressively promoting films that would be heading to Toronto in just a few days.

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Telluride has also attracted growing numbers of journalists and bloggers in recent years, many of whom write and tweet reviews of films — including their vocal enthusiasm last September for 12 Years a Slave, which arrived in Toronto already declared by some pundits to be the film to beat for Best Picture at the next Academy Awards.

“We wanted to react to what for us was a significant change last year, just in terms of the media atmosphere and the kind of coverage, the volume of the coverage coming out (of Telluride and elsewhere) for official premieres in Toronto,” Bailey said.

“So essentially films will either have to make a choice in terms of where they want to be, or if they are going to go to some other festival or some other place before Toronto, they’re going to have to play from Monday onwards with us.”

The new TIFF rule on premieres will affect the choices of dozens of films that screen during the fest’s opening four days. But Bailey said it’s really aimed at the “eight to 10” prestige pictures that all festivals jockey for at that time of year.

TIFF’s tough message has gone over well in Hollywood, he said.

“The response has been good. People understand that the landscape has changed. They all saw it last year, as well. We haven’t had any kind of strongly negative reaction.

“There’s some sense that this will be a series of conversations that we’ll have to have in the summer. But I think everybody understands why we need to make this shift.”

The Star attempted to speak to Telluride officials for reaction. A spokesperson for the fest promised to call back, but there was no response by press time.

In other TIFF news, Bailey said the fest this year will be slightly smaller than in other years, trimming about 15 features from the 300 features and shorts it usually screens each September. The cuts will mostly come from the Special Presentations program, which has grown unwieldy over the years with dozens of films on the slate.

“We’re going to pull that back a little bit,” Bailey said.