The advertising gurus say that the important thing is that they talk about you, whether it’s good or bad, and that’s something that Francis Ford Coppola seems to have applied perfectly for the promotion of his next film. Megalopolis arrived with a big announcement that promised a story on par with the filmmaker’s great hits, such as The Godfather or Apocalypse Now, but its presence at the Cannes Film Festival was mediocre… and the accusations against the director of excessive behavior on set didn’t help, either.
Anyway, Lionsgate has wanted to take all the bad reviews and turn the tables, and they have released a new trailer for the film in which they compare everything that has been said about this movie with the reviews that the likes of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula received at the time. And, without a doubt, the trailer is a joke worthy of the circumstances:
A foretold failure?
However, the effect has not been as they intended. Through social media, users have been pointing out that those criticisms are false or taken from comments on other movies that have nothing to do with the ones mentioned… which has led to the removal of the video from their official channels. But the question is: did they already know this beforehand and just wanted to make noise… or did they really have no idea about the subject?
In any case, Megalopolis will arrive in theaters on September 27th, and despite everything pointing to a blatant failure for Coppola’s latest film, the distributor is desperately clinging to hope in order to make the movie at least somewhat successful. At the very least, they hope to recoup the $120 million it cost to make (all out of Coppola’s pocket)… but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen.
