A year ago, Francis Ford Coppola, director of the cult «The Godfather» and one of the last titans of 70s auteur cinema, presented his new project called «Megalopolis» — a large-scale sci-fi epic that could seemingly become a big hit.
However, from the very beginning, everything did not go according to plan. Despite his great ambitions, no one wanted to finance the project, so Coppola had to invest his own $120 million. With the finished version, the director arrived in Cannes expecting a standing ovation — but the actual reception was a surprise, to put it mildly.
Lionsgate eventually committed to releasing «Megalopolis» in theaters in May 2025. In the United States, the film barely grossed $4 million in its debut, losing out to three older films and an Indian action movie broadcast in Telugu
The total global box office for the entire run amounted to $11.2 million. The studio returned the rights to the director, who at the same time refused to sign any streaming deals or even Blu-ray releases. However, Coppola is now trying to give viewers a second chance» by launching a new theatrical tour in partnership with Live Nation. Surprisingly, the tickets are sold out almost everywhere (there are only a few seats left for the upcoming screenings in Denver, Dallas and San Francisco).
During the same tour, Coppola wants to show a re-edited version of the film, which will include the previously cut dream scenes — a decision that, according to the director, made people say that «the movie is very strange».
Currently, «Megalopolis» a modest 45% from critics and 35% from viewers on Rotten Tomatoesand mostly negative reviews. Interestingly, Coppola himself gave his film 5 stars on Letterboxd, actually recognizing it as a masterpiece.
«This is a one hundred percent author’s blockbuster, devoid of compromises in terms of viewer comfort. It is always confusing and at the same time framed in a pretentious monumentality. It is a colossus on clay feet, both as a project itself and as a content element that symbolizes the author’s warning about the empire shown in the film (read — the United States). Such cinema is simply impossible to evaluate rationally. And there is no point in», — with ITC reviews.
Recall that «Megalopolis» — is an epic fable from ancient Rome set in modern America. In the story, an accident destroys the metropolis of New Rome, and the architect Caesar Catiline, endowed with the ability to stop time, tries to build a utopian city from scratch. Adam Driver takes on the lead role, along with the rest of the cast: Shia Labeouf («Transformers», «Fury»), Nathalie Emmanuel («Fast and Furious», «Game of Thrones»), Aubrey Plaza («White Lotus»), Giancarlo Esposito («Better Call Saul»), Laurence Fishburne («The Matrix», «John Wick»), Jason Schwartzman («The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes»), Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.
Source: Games Radar, World of Reel
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