The most talked-about film of 2024 has had its major new trailer pulled offline abruptly after a ‘screw up’ that saw made-up critics’ quotes used and attributed for Megalopolis.
Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed $120,000,000 comeback movie premiered to baffled reactions from critics at Cannes Film Festival in May, even being dubbed ‘the worst movie ever’.
Starring Adam Driver alongside the likes of Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight, Shia LaBeouf, Dustin Hoffman and Giancarlo Esposito, the film follows Driver’s ambitious architect Cesar Catilina, who wants to rebuild New Rome (a futuristic New York stand-in) as a utopia while butting horns with arch-conservative mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Esposito).
Oh yes, and he inexplicably has the power to stop time.
Playing into the (to put it mildly) polarised reaction to Megalopolis from critics so far, the new trailer released on Wednesday displayed quotes from past reviewers trashing Coppola’s previous films.
These movies included The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, both of which have gone on to be considered masterpieces.
*The trailer above is one previously released*
Of course, the tone of Megalopolis’s new trailer was clearly meant to suggest that this movie too would soon be considered of high enough quality to join its hallowed cinematic siblings – just as soon as people saw it.
‘True genius is often misunderstood,’ insisted cast member Laurence Fishburne, who also narrates the now pulled trailer, as criticisms such as ‘pretentious’, ‘tragic’ and ‘absurdity’ flashed up on screen.
‘A sloppy self-indulgent movie,’ Andrew Sarris reportedly said of The Godfather in his review for The Village Voice, while John Simon apparently described Apocalypse Now as ‘a spectacular failure’.
However, it quickly transpired that the quotes had been fabricated and misattributed as phrases said to have been written by the likes of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael went unfound in their reviews.
‘Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis,’ a Lionsgate spokesperson said in a statement provided to Variety.
‘We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.’
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman was one of the writers to sound the alarm after the trailer incorrectly claimed he had called Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoke’s Dracula ‘a beautiful mess’ in his review for former publication Entertainment Weekly.
Gleiberman pointed out that Megalopolis’ trailer was ‘built on a false narrative’ as ‘critics loved The Godfather’ and the more divisive Apocalypse Now ‘received a lot of crucial critical support’.
Ebert’s comment calling Dracula ‘a triumph of style over substance’ was actually from his review of 1989’s Batman, while it’s unclear where other criticisms included came from.
Alongside showing flashes of the sleaze and splendour of New Rome and its inhabitants in the latter half of the trailer, Fishburne also intoned that his director a ‘true visionary’ and positioned him as having been ‘always been ahead of his time’.
Megalopolis’s trailer then finished with a look at leading man Driver, randomly in an unbuttoned dark shirt and holding a light stick as he was heard saying: ‘There’s still so much to accomplish – but is there time?’
This recent trailer embarrassment is just the latest controversy surrounding Megalopolis, after video emerged of Coppola on set seemingly trying to pull in several female extras for a kiss.
He had previously been accused of inappropriate behaviour, including pulling women to sit on his lap and trying to kiss numerous extras during a nightclub scene, which the footage appeared to confirm.
Coppola had denied being ‘touchy-feely’, claiming that he could never be a predator due to his upbringing and the respect for women instilled in him by his mother.
Metro.co.uk has contacted UK distributors Entertainment for comment.
Megalopolis will be released in UK cinemas on Friday, September 27.
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