The Italian-American director is getting one of the worst box office debuts of his long and illustrious career. His Megalopolis was presented to the American public with a more than disastrous D+ at the CinemaScore and an impressive series of negative reviews from the press (49% on Rotten Tomatoes), the result could translate into a weekend even under 5 million dollars (the film cost 120 million dollars).
The genesis of Megalopolis was complicated from the very beginning. The film has been developing for some time and was self-financed by Coppola himself. Before its presentation at the Cannes Film Festival (here are the winners) the film was screened to a large group of distributors, without attracting the attention of any of the major studios. In the end, Lionsgate stepped forward, but without taking on the marketing costs (here is our article). The last problem for Coppola, finally, came from the launch of the trailer in August, removed by Lionsgate itself due to the presence in it of film criticisms made against the director’s films that were completely invented.
Megalopolis will also be distributed in our theaters, but first, it will be presented at the Rome Film Festival as a Pre-Opening film (here is the news).
Megalopolis and the production notes
Megalopolis, produced by American Zoetrope, is written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who also acts as producer together with Michael Bederman. The cast includes Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurence Fishburne, Chloe Fineman, Dustin Hoffman, Shia LaBeouf, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jason Schwartzman and Jon Voight. The total cost of the film is around 120 million dollars. The film will be in theaters from October 16, distributed in Italy by Eagle Pictures.
The official plot: A brilliant artist with the power to stop time battles an ultra-conservative mayor to save the dying world and inspire hope. Megalopolis is a Roman epic set in a modern and imaginary America. The city of New Rome is changing, causing bitter conflicts between Cesar Catilina, a brilliant artist who tries to project himself into a utopian and idealistic future, and his nemesis, Mayor Franklin Cicero, a reactionary tied to a regressive, greedy, and corrupt status quo. Between the two comes Julia, the mayor’s daughter who, being in love with Cesar Catilina, finds herself having to choose who to place her loyalty to and wondering what humanity deserves.
Source: THR
Leave a Reply