From conception to opening weekend, few movies have had a harder time getting made than "Megalopolis." Unfortunately, all that time and energy did little good at the box office, and there are many reasons why.
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00:00From conception to opening weekend, few movies have had a harder time getting made than Megalopolis.
00:06Unfortunately, all that time and energy did little good at the box office, and there are
00:10many reasons why.
00:12And warning, major spoilers ahead.
00:15Aside from Christopher Nolan, Jordan Peele, and James Cameron, how many directors can
00:19guarantee a hit on their name alone these days?
00:22Even Steven Spielberg isn't a sure thing after West Side Story and The Fableman's Bombed,
00:26despite excellent reviews.
00:28While even a legend like Martin Scorsese has to rely on streaming services to get his
00:31movies made, marketing for Megalopolis centered almost entirely around Francis Ford Coppola,
00:36a director once held in the same esteem as Spielberg and Scorsese, who hasn't had nearly
00:40the same success in his later career.
00:43Coppola made his best films in the 1970s.
00:45His run of The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now
00:50remains the stuff of legend.
00:52His work in the 80s and 90s, however, was more inconsistent.
00:56For every solid hit like Bram Stoker's Dracula, there's a disastrous release to match.
01:00In fact, Megalopolis isn't the first time he's put up his own money to fund an ambitious
01:05utopian tale on the big screen and got burned.
01:07The same thing happened with 1981's One from the Heart, which also flopped at the box office.
01:12His reputation took a hit and has never really recovered.
01:15As such, Coppola isn't frequently on the minds of younger, casual moviegoers, and older moviegoers
01:20have good reason to approach his grand return to directing after 13 years away with some
01:24degree of skepticism.
01:26If Megalopolis was to have any chance of success, it would need to succeed on its own merits,
01:31and that hasn't happened.
01:32When does an empire die?
01:35Coppola first conceived of Megalopolis in 1977 as a four-part operatic experience.
01:41He got serious about developing the idea into a movie in 1983 and tried to produce it on
01:46and off over the next four decades.
01:48One would hope such extensive work would allow Coppola to perfect his ideas into a masterpiece.
01:53Instead, the final result is a mess packed with too many weird concepts that can't possibly
01:57add up.
01:58Why does Caesar Catalina freeze time, and what purpose does this power serve him as
02:02an architect?
02:03Why does he quote all of Hamlet's to-be or not-to-be speech?
02:06What's the point of the Russian satellite crashing into New Rome if the aftermath is
02:10never addressed?
02:11Is Megalon made from Caesar's dead wife, or the power of love, or what?
02:16Some of these questions were answered in older versions of the script, with a leaked draft
02:19explaining Megalon and Megalopolis more satisfactorily.
02:22However, the finished Megalopolis feels like an incoherent grab-bag of scenes written at
02:27different points in history.
02:29If the script itself wasn't messy enough, Coppola had his actors improvise many scenes,
02:33which might well have contributed to the jarring tonal differences.
02:36Unfortunately, the final product sometimes feels like the characters are in completely
02:40different movies.
02:42Even with its narrative and tonal problems, one would think a science fiction movie from
02:46a visionary director that cost between $120 and $136 million to make would at least be
02:52amazing to look at.
02:54And yes, Megalopolis does contain some stunning imagery, particularly in the montages where
02:58Caesar is tripping on acid and having his shot-up face rebuilt with Megalon.
03:02And yet, these moments of grandeur don't appear as often as one would hope.
03:06For large chunks of the runtime, Megalopolis alternates between blandly staged dialogue
03:10scenes and some of the most amateurish-looking green-screen and CG effects to ever appear
03:14in a major theatrical release.
03:16When an effects-heavy visual wonder like Poor Things can be made for just $35 million, what
03:21excuse does Coppola have for Megalopolis looking so cheap?
03:24Well, it turns out much of that money never actually made it to screen.
03:28Halfway through production, the director fired his entire visual effects team, and members
03:32of the art department resigned soon after that.
03:35According to multiple sources working on the production, Coppola could never make up his
03:39mind about how he wanted the film to look.
03:41For all his hatred of Marvel movies, Coppola was responsible for the same scandals that
03:45have plagued the Marvel Cinematic Universe—constant last-minute changes resulting in exhausted
03:50effects workers and inferior visual effects quality.
03:53Coppola had over four decades to figure out what his vision should look like, so there's
03:57really no excuse for not being able to adequately describe this for his VFX team.
04:01There's still so much to accomplish, but is there time?
04:05Speaking to Rolling Stone, Coppola made a point that the Megalopolis cast was partially
04:09made up of canceled actors, and that he didn't want the film to be, quote,
04:13"...deemed some woke Hollywood production."
04:15His thinking is somewhat understandable regarding his choice to cast John Voight as Hamilton
04:19Crassus III, for including a Trump-supporting conservative actor in a film critical of Trump
04:24is at least consistent with Caesar's insistence on debating people we disagree with.
04:28However, people will surely be scratching their heads as to why Coppola hired Voight's
04:32Midnight Cowboy co-star, Dustin Hoffman, as the fixer Nush Berman, given Hoffman was canceled
04:37for multiple allegations of sexual harassment.
04:40Even more controversial is Shia LaBeouf, who plays the main villain Claudio Pulcher and
04:44is set to go on trial for alleged physical and sexual abuse just weeks after the film's
04:48opening.
04:50Even those who try to separate the art from the artist will have trouble keeping these
04:53issues out of their minds when the plot of Megalopolis confronts them by way of Claudio
04:57framing Caesar for the statutory rape of underage pop star Vesta Sweetwater.
05:03Coppola not only hired actors accused of sexual misconduct, he's also been accused of sexual
05:07misconduct on the set of the film himself.
05:09The Guardian first reported that Coppola tried to hug and kiss naked female extras while
05:13filming a nightclub scene.
05:15Then, Variety obtained a video appearing to confirm these reports.
05:19While one extra told Deadline that Coppola never made her feel uncomfortable and that
05:22the filmmaker was, quote, nothing but professional, another extra claimed that he didn't ask for
05:27consent and has sued Coppola for sexual harassment and assault.
05:31For his part, Coppola is suing Variety for libel.
05:34A statement from Coppola's lawyers published in Deadline calls his accusers jealous and
05:38resentful of the fact that Coppola is a, quote, creative genius, proposing that that's why
05:42some people spoke out against him.
05:44Whether the allegations against the director are true or not, it's likely that these reports
05:48made some moviegoers stay away when Megalopolis was released in cineplexes.
05:53The only hope a movie is confusing, uncommercial, and controversial as Megalopolis had of making
05:59any money rested on critical acclaim.
06:01From the time Megalopolis made its world premiere at Cannes, however, it was clear
06:05the film was dividing critics.
06:06Yes, the film got a seven-minute standing ovation at the prestigious festival, but it
06:10seems that acclaim didn't last.
06:12As of late September 2024, it has a 49 percent Tomatometer score and a 55 on Metacritic.
06:18Even critics who loved the movie had to lay down qualifiers.
06:21For example, IGN's Siddhant Adlika acknowledged the film as frustrating even while praising
06:26its, quote, "...profoundly personal vision and jaw-dropping transformations," and a mixed
06:31review by Looper's own Audrey Fox called it, "...objectively bad, but audacious as hell."
06:36Of course, other critics were even less reserved in their critiques of the film, with Maureen
06:40Lee Lenker of Entertainment Weekly concluding her F-grade review by writing,
06:43"...in addition to Coppola being the mastermind behind two of cinema's greatest achievements,
06:48he's also now the architect of one of its worst."
06:50As of September 2024, Rotten Tomatoes' Popcorn Meter audience score is at 34 percent.
06:56Metacritic's user score is at a 4.7 out of 10, and IMDb's average rating is a 5.2 out
07:02of 10.
07:03Even the score on Letterboxd, a site whose cinephile user base is more likely to give
07:07an ambitious art film like this one a chance, averages out to 2.5 out of 5.
07:12In short, the underwhelming audience reaction to Megalopolis negated any chance of word-of-mouth
07:16success softening the awful opening weekend box office figures.
07:21Megalopolis was clearly hard to market, and Lionsgate's big attempt to promote it led
07:25to embarrassment.
07:27The trailer tried to get ahead of bad festival reviews by showcasing negative responses Coppola
07:31had received in the past for The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker's Dracula,
07:36implying Megalopolis is yet another misunderstood masterpiece.
07:39And while other films have been marketed with similarly bad reviews, this is surely the
07:43first time someone did this with reviews that didn't actually exist.
07:47The quotes about Coppola's past work used in the Megalopolis trailer were fake.
07:51Pauline Kael of The New Yorker was quoted as saying that The Godfather was, quote, "...diminished
07:55by its artsiness," when she actually adored the film, and the Roger Ebert quote supposedly
07:59dismissing Bram Stoker's Dracula as a triumph of style over substance actually came from
08:04his review of Tim Burton's Batman.
08:06"...forgive my ignorance."
08:09Bad reviews do exist for all of Coppola's most celebrated films, but a now-fired marketing
08:14strategist reportedly decided to ask ChatGPT for negative quotes about them rather than
08:18taking the time to read the reviews.
08:21Lionsgate apologized, and the trailer got pulled, leaving Megalopolis with even less
08:25marketing visibility and more controversy.
08:28At this point, if someone is still interested in Megalopolis, they probably want the full
08:32crazy experience that audiences at Cannes and the Toronto International Film Festival
08:36got.
08:37At those festival screenings, a live actor pretending to be a reporter stood up facing
08:41the screen and asked a question, to which Caesar responded.
08:45This gimmick is already significantly scaled down from Coppola's original vision, in which
08:49Amazon Alexa technology would have allowed the audience to ask different questions and
08:52Caesar would give the most relevant response.
08:55This almost became a reality, but The Verge reports the people working on this concept
08:59were laid off in 2022.
09:01In most multiplex showings, even the scaled-down interactive theatrical element no longer exists,
09:07with Caesar just responding to a voiceover on the soundtrack.
09:10Only a few showings at select theaters, labeled The Ultimate Experience, have replicated the
09:14live moment that drove critics nuts at film festivals.
09:17For reference, Megalopolis averaged $2,157 per theater in its opening weekend, but at
09:24New York City's AMC Lincoln Square, which hosted multiple Ultimate Experience screenings,
09:29including a preview screening with Coppola in attendance, it made over $84,000.
09:34The financial burden of Megalopolis' bombing falls mainly on the Coppola family.
09:39Not only did Francis Ford Coppola self-fund the production, but his nephew Robert Schwartzman's
09:43company Utopia handled much of the marketing.
09:46One, two, three, yippee, yay.
09:50Since Lionsgate only paid for distribution rights and is off the hook for marketing costs,
09:54the company might still make money from Megalopolis, despite its failure.
09:58Nevertheless, it represents another failure for Lionsgate on the back of the $145 million
10:03budgeted video game adaptation Borderlands, which bombed at the box office with an $8.8
10:08million domestic opening weekend, a $15.48 million total domestic gross.
10:14And that's not all.
10:15Even with a more modest budget of around $50 million, the 2024 remake of The Crow also
10:20bombed hard with a $4.6 million domestic opening and a $9.27 million domestic total.
10:27Other recent Lionsgate releases, including 1992, The Killer's Game, and Never Let Go,
10:33arrived with almost no marketing and also brought in little at the box office.
10:37The mini-major studio will surely be hoping that its 2025 slate, which includes a Michael
10:41Jackson biopic and new installments in the John Wick and Saw franchises, makes up for
10:46its disastrous 2024 at the box office.
10:50If you or anyone you know has been the victim of sexual assault or child abuse, contact
10:54the relevant resources below.
10:56The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline
11:01at 1-800-656-HOPE, 1-800-656-4673.
11:07The Child Help National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-CHILD, 1-800-422-4453.
11:15Or contact their live chat services.