Megalopolis is a mega flop at the box office(olis)

Francis Ford Coppola’s $136 million self-financed drama sank under the weight of negative buzz.
Photo: Lionsgate

In Francis Ford Coppola’s allegorical, phantasmagoric fever dream passion project MegapolisAdam Driver portrays a visionary city planner who can freeze time with his mind and builds towering, surreally fluid cityscapes using a mysterious substance called Megalon. Over the weekend, Ford’s $136 million self-financed drama collapsed under the weight of negative buzz, earning a paltry $4 million during its first three days of release in 2,000 North American theaters.

To put that box office return into perspective: Megapolis in sixth place Devara: Part 1a three-hour action epic in Telugu playing on about half as many screens. Furthermore, such underperformance fell far short of the pre-release tracking estimates that Ford’s two-hour, 18-minute ensemble opus had – the cast includes Nathalie Emmanuel, Shia LaBeouf, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurence Fishburne, Dustin Hoffman and Aubrey Plaza – which generated revenue. between $7 million and $10 million. Or, to put it another way, Megapolis would have to continue selling tickets at the same rate, without a loss, for another 24 weeks to break even (excluding print and advertising expenses: another $30 million to $50 million).

Reputation and financial, Megapolis‘S The 85-year-old writer-director-producer (and not the film distributor Lionsgate) has the most to lose. The idiosyncratic American author behind it Apocalypse now and the Godfather trilogy began conjuring up the film script in the early ’80s, borrowing $200 million from his Napa Valley winery to personally finance Megalopolis’‘s nine-figure budget when studio financiers deemed the project too risky. The production designer, visual effects supervisor, and supervising art director (in addition to the entire regular VFX team) quit during filming due to what has been characterized as an epic case of “creative differences” with Coppola. Even more damaging, background actresses came forward to accuse the octogenarian of repeatedly attempting unconsensual kissing on set while filming a Bacchanalian disco scene “to get them in the mood” (Coppola has strongly denied the allegations). And a disastrous buyer screening for 300 industrial entrepreneurs at the Universal City Walk IMAX in Los Angeles in March left distributors pessimistic about Megalopolis’s commercial prospects.

However, according to Comscore, senior media analyst Paul Degarabedian focuses exclusively on Megalopolis’The minuscule ticket sales and D+ CinemaScore may be missing the point. “The fact that the film is showing in theaters at all this weekend is something of a miracle,” says Degarabedian. “I think a bold, swinging film release should be celebrated.”

It’s fair to say that these are dark days for the long-running passion projects of Academy Award-winning film legends. Writer-director-star Kevin Costner’s was released in June Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1the first part of a western series that he started developing in 1988 and into which he invested $38 million of his own money, flopped hard. And that forced its distributor, Warner Bros., to postpone a theatrical rollout Horizon: Chapter 2which would be released two months later (the sequel is still scheduled for release at an “unspecified date” this year). “Some passion projects do work,” Degarabedian says. “Tarantino’s films: they are all passion projects in a way. But if you can’t get the audience excited to see the film, that’s not a recipe for success.”

In post-pandemic, post-strike Hollywood, “Don’t bring me your passion project,” says a producer behind a string of blockbusters. “When I hear ‘passion project’ I think: No fucking way. Nobody wants it. It just becomes a weird vanity thing that makes 25 cents theatrical (issue). And I don’t do the hard work.”

Lionsgate, in turn, did not finance or pay for any of these projects Megalopolis’marketing. (In August, the studio in Santa Monica did Take responsibility for making a trailer for the film full of fake quotes from real critics.) Under terms of a deal struck in June, after the film premiered to a seven-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, Lionsgate will earn a distribution fee, while Coppola retains ownership Megapolis under its American Zoetrope production banner. “Francis Ford Coppola is one of the world’s greatest filmmakers and a beloved member of our creative family,” Adam Fogelson, chairman of Lionsgate’s film group, said in a statement. “We are proud to partner with him in giving Megapolis the wide theatrical release it deserves. Like all real art, it will be viewed and judged by film audiences over time.

In an interview with The Wall Street Magazine previously published MegapolisIn the film’s megaflopolis, Coppola discussed a contingency plan for a “very useful” tax write-off if the film flopped. “I’m very old, so it’s all laid out in an estate plan,” the director said.