Francis Ford Coppola's “Megalopolis” is a box office megaflop

Francis Ford Coppola's self-financed $136 million drama faltered under the weight of its negative reception.
Photo: Lionsgate

Inside Francis Ford Coppola's allegorical, phantasmagoric fever dream passion project MegalopolisAdam Driver portrays a visionary urban planner who can stop time with his mind and builds towering, surreally fluid cityscapes using a mysterious substance called Megalon. Over the weekend, Ford's self-financed $136 million drama collapsed under the weight of negative reception, grossing a paltry $4 million in its first three days in theaters in 2,000 North American theaters.

To put this box office success in perspective: Megalopolis Sixth place behind Devara: Part 1a three-hour Telugu-language action epic running on about half as many screens. What's more, such underperformance fell far short of the pre-release “tracking” estimates of Ford's two-hour, 18-minute ensemble opus – whose cast includes Nathalie Emmanuel, Shia LaBeouf, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurence Fishburne, Dustin Hoffman and Aubrey Plaza belong – brought in between 7 and 10 million US dollars. Or to put it another way: Megalopolis would need to sell tickets at the same price for another 24 weeks without a decline to break even (excluding printing and advertising expenses: another $30 million to $50 million).

Reputational and financial, Megalopolis'S The 85-year-old writer, director and 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 developing the film's script in the early '80s and borrowed $200 million from his Napa Valley winery to personally finance it Megalopolis's nine-figure budget when the studio's backers deemed the project too risky. The production designer, visual effects supervisor, and lead art director (in addition to the entire VFX team) quit during filming due to an epic case of “creative differences” with Coppola. More damaging background actresses came forward to accuse the octogenarian of repeatedly attempting to kiss non-consensually on set “to get her in the mood” while filming a bacchanal disco scene (Coppola has strenuously denied the allegations). And a disastrous buyer's screening for 300 industry professionals at the Universal City Walk IMAX in Los Angeles in March left distributors pessimistic Megalopolis's commercial prospects.

However, according to Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, the focus is solely on Megalopolis'The tiny ticket sales and D+ CinemaScore may be missing the point. “The fact that the film is even coming to theaters this weekend is nothing short of a miracle,” says Dergarabedian. “I think a bold, bold film release should be celebrated.”

Of course, these are dark days for the passion projects of Oscar-winning film legends. Writer-director-star Kevin Costner will be released in June Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1the first part of a western series that he began developing in 1988 and in which he invested $38 million of his own money, flopped badly. And that forced its distributor Warner Bros. to postpone the theatrical release Horizon: Chapter 2which was scheduled to be released two months later (the sequel is still scheduled to be released at an “undetermined date” later this year). “Some passion projects work,” Dergarabedian says. “Tarantino's films: They are all, in a sense, passion projects. But if you can’t get the audience excited about going to the cinema, it’s not a recipe for success.”

In post-pandemic, post-strike Hollywood: “Don’t bring me your passion project,” a producer behind a string of blockbusters tells me. “When I hear 'passion project' I think: Absolutely not. Nobody wants it. It'll just be a weird vanity thing that puts 25 cents (in) in theaters. And I’m not doing the hard work.”

Lionsgate, for its part, didn't finance or pay for any of it Megalopolis's Marketing. (In August, the Santa Monica-based studio did (Take responsibility for creating a trailer for the film full of fake quotes from real critics.) Under a deal the company struck in June, after the film premiered to a seven-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, Lionsgate will receive a rental fee, while Coppola retains ownership of it Megalopolis under its American production banner Zoetrope. “Francis Ford Coppola is one of the world’s greatest filmmakers and a valued 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 fundraising Megalopolis the wide theatrical release it deserves. Like all real art, it will be seen and judged by film audiences over time.”

In an interview with The Wall Street magazine already published once MegalopolisCoppola discussed a contingency plan for a “very sensible” tax write-off in the event the film failed. “I’m very old, so everything goes into an estate plan,” the director said.