The road to the big screen for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis has been a bumpy one to say the least, and one can’t help but wonder what else will come before the film’s planned U.S. release on September 27 What a scandal. This latest drama comes from a bunch of fabricated critic quotes plastered throughout a new trailer produced by Lionsgate.
The response to the 2024 Cannes Film Festival was less than favorable (only 53% of critics on RT were positive), with some staff claiming that Coppola’s behavior on set was unprofessional to say the least. These two snafus alone are a sign that the $120 million self-funded behemoth, starring Adam Driver and a slew of other big-name actors, may be facing a lot of It ran into trouble when it finally hit theaters (it also struggled to find distribution), but the mistakes Lionsgate made in promoting the film in the U.S. hurt its chances of making big money.
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On Wednesday morning, Lionsgate uploaded a new trailer that gives fans who are still hopeful (or just morbidly curious) plenty to think about. Sadly, it also contains a troubling number of critical rants, highlighting how many of his “classics” have also been panned. That alone would be dangerous after a divided reception, but we admit it’s a compelling game that might stir up some buzz. The problem is that most, if not all, of these quotes are untrue or misplaced.
Lionsgate has removed the trailer from its official channel, but you can still watch it through other YouTube channels dedicated to the movie. The following is part of a statement released by Lionsgate via Variety: “Lionsgate is immediately recalling our Megacity trailer… For the inexcusable errors that occurred during our review process, we express our condolences to the critic, Francis ·Ford Coppola and American Peep Show Company sincerely apologize.
Some of the biggest quotes include film critic legends like Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, but the phrases highlighted in the trailer can’t be found in their respective reviews of the films in question. What’s even more interesting is that Ebert’s “style trumps substance” line actually comes from his 1989 review of “Batman,” not “Dracula.” At the time of writing, it’s not clear where most of the citations came from or how they got so heavily “remixed”, but some are already speculating that ChatGPT might be used to scrape them, which doesn’t make it possible at all. We are surprised because we currently live in a nightmare world.
The trailer is expected to go online again once the lines are removed and replaced with actual lines spoken by real people about his film. You might expect movie studio marketing teams to have better fact-checking skills, or simply not try to mislead potential moviegoers with information that could easily be proven to be false, but here we are.