Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis plays to near-empty cinemas in North America

LOS ANGELES – There is no kind way to put it: American director Francis Ford Coppola’s film Megalopolis died on arrival over the weekend.

Coppola, 85, spent decades on the avant-garde fable, ultimately selling part of his wine business to raise the necessary funds – about US$120 million (S$153 million) in production costs and another US$20 million or so in marketing and distribution expenses.

But moviegoers rejected the film. Ticket sales from Sept 26 night through Sept 29 will total roughly US$4 million in North America, according to analysts, slightly below worst-case scenario prerelease projections.

Megalopolis played in nearly 2,000 cinemas in the United States and Canada. As of Sept 28 evening, it was on pace to place sixth in the weekend box office derby, behind even Devara: Part 1, a poorly reviewed, three-hour, Indian Telugu-language action drama that was available in about 1,000 cinemas.

Megalopolis is about a brilliant architect (played by American actor Adam Driver) who wants a society to lift itself out of the gutter. Ticketbuyers gave the film a D+ grade in CinemaScore exit polls. It is rare for a big-budget movie from a major director to get less than a B-.

Mr Adam Fogelson, the top movie executive at Lionsgate, which distributed Megalopolis, described Coppola as “a cherished member of our creative family”, and said the company was “proud to partner” with Coppola to give the film “the wide theatrical release it deserves”.

“Like all true art, it will be viewed and judged by movie audiences over time,” Mr Fogelson added.

A spokesperson for Coppola declined to comment.

In the 1980s, when Coppola first began to develop the film, Megalopolis may well have had a chance in cinemas. It was a time in Hollywood when ambitious films for thinking people could be eased into a few cinemas and allowed to build an audience over months, adding more screens week by week and sometimes playing for a year or more. Hollywood could afford to take it slow in part because moviegoing dominated leisure time: Not only was there no internet yet, cable TV and video games were still in their relative infancy.

Today, movies are typically booked into as many cinemas as possible as quickly as possible, especially if reviews are weak. Studios use this distribution tactic to capitalise on expensive marketing campaigns, which are intended to open a narrow window of interest from consumers. If the masses do not immediately materialise, cinema chains redirect screens toward other movies. (On Oct 4, the Warner Bros sequel, Joker: Folie A Deux, will arrive in more than 4,000 cinemas.)

Megalopolis almost did not make it into cinemas.

Earlier in 2024, when Coppola began shopping for a distributor, every big studio turned him down. Some executives from these studios admired the movie for its artistic risks. But none saw much hope for it in cinemas. Eventually, Lionsgate agreed to distribute the film for a fee.

More and more, original films are sent directly to streaming services – if they get made at all. Cinemas are increasingly for remakes and sequels.

“Like it or not, movie theatres are not where this audience gets this kind of entertainment any more,” Mr David Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers, said in an email.

Coppola is the second Hollywood legend in three months to learn this lesson the hard way. In June, American actor-director Kevin Costner’s costly Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 flatlined at the box office. Plans to release the second chapter in cinemas were cancelled.

In Hollywood, where backbiting and schadenfreude run rampant, some agents and publicists have privately referred to Megalopolis as “Megaflopolis” for months. The film seemed to be snakebit from the start, suffering from off-screen problems that included crew firings in the middle of production, a libel suit and a bungled promotional trailer.

But most of the film industry winced at the dismal weekend turnout.

Many people in leadership positions in Hollywood were inspired to pursue cinema as a career because of Coppola’s masterpieces from the 1970s, including The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979). To see one of their heroes from that era crash and burn is a painful reminder of how much the movie business has atrophied.

For the weekend, the No. 1 movie in North America was The Wild Robot (Universal/DreamWorks Animation), which was on pace to collect a sturdy US$35 million over its first three days in cinemas. The Wild Robot cost US$78 million to make. It received euphoric reviews.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Warner Bros) was second, taking in about US$16 million, for a four-week domestic total of roughly US$250 million. Transformers One (Paramount) was third, collecting an estimated US$9 million, for a two-week domestic total of about US$40 million. NYTIMES

• Megalopolis is showing in Singapore cinemas.