Francis Ford Coppola has been developing the movie Megalopolis for nearly 50 years, waiting for the right time and all the pieces to come together. Friends, Romans, countrymen, finally the time is now! At long last Coppola was able to create the best version of the film the world has been waiting for: an experimental fable inspired by the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BC, in which an upstart tried to overthrow Roman consuls. Audiences — including critics — saw the whole film in Cannes… and the reviews were bad. The movie comes out at the end of September, and it seems distributor Lionsgate thought they’d try to get ahead of the lackluster reviews. Released earlier this week, the new trailer opened with negative reviews, ascribed to noted film critics, of Coppola’s iconic films like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. There was just one teenie weenie problem: the quotes were fake. After being called out, Lionsgate has pulled the trailer and issued an apology to Coppola. If only there had been some way to prevent such a glaring snafu…
Lionsgate is recalling its latest trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s epic “Megalopolis,” which featured a litany of fabricated quotes from famous film critics.
“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.”
The trailer, released on Wednesday morning, aimed to position Coppola’s latest film as a work of art that would withstand the test of time, much like his previous masterpieces “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.”
The video included several quotes from critics panning Coppola’s previous work — but none of the phrases, attributed to the likes of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, could be found in any of their reviews.
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman was incorrectly cited as calling the 1992 film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” “a beautiful mess” and highlighting its “absurdity” when he reviewed the film for Entertainment Weekly, where he worked at the time of its release.
“Even if you’re one of those people who don’t like critics, we hardly deserve to have words put in our mouths. Then again, the trivial scandal of all this is that the whole ‘Megalopolis’ trailer is built on a false narrative,” Gleiberman said of the trailer’s falsified quotes. “Critics loved ‘The Godfather.’ And though ‘Apocalypse Now’ was divisive, it received a lot of crucial critical support. As far as me calling ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ ‘a beautiful mess,’ I only wish I’d said that! Regarding that film, it now sounds kind.”
It’s not clear where most of the quotes featured in the trailer came from — with the exception of Roger Ebert’s comment, “a triumph of style over substance,” which was actually pulled from his 1989 review of “Batman,” and not about “Dracula,” as indicated in the trailer.
First of all, how dare you put words in the late great Pauline Kael’s mouth! And second, what a dumb, lazy way to mess up! What was the thinking here? That no one would find out? The thing is, this trailer had to have gone through several rounds of meetings, from brainstorming sessions to progress updates to a suite of executives signing off on the final cut. So where was the fact checking? There’s been speculation (but no confirmation) that this was sloppy AI work, like they asked ChatGPT or something to generate the quotes. But — and I cannot stress this enough — using AI does not mean you don’t have to fact check! Frankly, I think it doubles the need! Whether AI is to blame here or not, some corner was definitely cut among the people working on the trailer. Real, live, human people, who would do the research to look up the reviews of each Coppola movie and pull quotes accurately. And maybe even another set of human eyes to verify the finished product as a last step. So what are the odds Lionsgate will take to heart this very public lesson in the importance of fact checking? To quote a fake quote, what “a beautiful mess.”
I hope ths film flops badly.
I hope it doesn’t only sink Coppola’s pet projects, it sinks all the obnoxious pet projects of all directors EVAH.
They should put their money in projects that are worth attention but that us audiences will never see because they cannot get funding.
Megalopolis is the ‘serious’ equivalent of JLo’s This is Me Now.
Not wasting my keys on this film but the Cataline conspiracy is fascinating. If you want a light look at it, episode 38 of Mike Duncan’s podcast The History of Rome covers it in about 20 minutes.
It is! So sad it’s been co-opted as a premise to shoot this rubbish film.
I almost wonder if way back in the storyboard/conceptual phase of developing the trailer someone slapped in random quotes as placeholders. Like “these are the kind pull quotes we’ll use”
And in any number of ways, none good, there was a mess up and they didn’t get updated.
Very bad on Lionsgate and their marketing team’s parts. But even worse that messaging is built entirely on a false premise. So Boo!
What’s with all the unforced errors in film marketing this summer?
I really liked Dracula. I’ve rewatched it many times.
Oh well.
Same!! I legit love it. It’s a flavor but I’m into it. The soundtrack alone is so good! And Sadie Frost as Lucy is everything. I will never not have a mad passion for her in that role.
I feel bad for the actors. There are a lot of good ones in this.
This movie has Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, and Dustin Hoffman in it. Hard pass on ever seeing it.