Much has been said about Francis Ford Coppola's bonkers, pricey sci-fi epic Megalopolis but social media chatter doesn't necessarily translate into ticket sales and the movie looks set to bomb this weekend.
Earning a dismal $770,000 in previews on Tuesday and Thursday night, The Hollywood Reporter reveals that it's tracking to open between $5 million - $7 million at the North American box office. That's not good for a movie which cost $120 million to produce before marketing (the campaign included a now-deleted trailer with AI-generated fake quotes from critics).
No major Hollywood studio was willing to finance or distribute Megalopolis in North America after seeing it before the Cannes Film Festival but Lionsgate came on board...and won't be on the hook for distribution or marketing costs. As a result, Coppola looks set to lose a fortune.
The cast of Megalopolis includes Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, and Dustin Hoffman.
Coppola, who is considered a legend for helming classics like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, may have finally realised that big-budget filmmaking isn't as easy as it looks. A couple of years ago, he jumped at the chance to tear into superhero movies.
"When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration."
"I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again. Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is."
As for what will win the box office this weekend, DreamWorks Animation and Universal's The Wild Robot made $1.95 million in Thursday previews and is looking at a $24 million opening.
Written and directed by Oscar-nominee Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon), the cast is led by Lupita Nyong’o, Kit Connor, Pedro Pascal, Catherine O’Hara, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Matt Berry, and Ving Rhames.
The epic adventure follows the journey of a robot - ROZZUM unit 7134, "Roz" for short - that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.
Check out the trailer for The Wild Robot below.