Budget: $120 million [source]
Opening weekend gross: $4 million
Factoring in marketing costs and the theaters taking their cut of the profits, Megalopolis would need to make at least $300 million to break even. I think it’s safe to say that’s not happening.
It would have been THE worst opening for a $100 million movie ever, had it not been for Pluto Nash’s horriffic opening 22 years ago.
Even The New York Times is reporting near-empty screenings of Megalopolis!
Literally never heard this movie was being made except for 2 posts here, both of which happened after the movie opened in theaters. Marketing team obviously wasn’t doing shit.
Considering he had to finance everything himself, there wasn’t a ton of marketing and it’s a very controversial movie (in the sense that no one wanted to help him with financing/releasing it)
I only know about it because Aubrey Plaza has been around the latenight shows
Even adjusting for inflation, Pluto Nash still wins. It opened to $3.5M in today’s money.
I feel like there hasn’t been much marketing for Megalopolis. Could be a factor. I’d say the long run time doesn’t help, but Oppenheimer counters that point.
Oppenheimer had the advantage of people knowing basically what the story was about. The poster for Megalopolis doesn’t really tell me what it’s about beyond Adam Driver apparently being an architect.
It’s the same reason everything is a reboot or remake: A lot of the marketing cost has already been taken care of with the first movie.
This is the second time I have heard about this film, the last time being the release of the first teaser trailer. Studios love to spend 70 million marketing budgets on broadcast TV advertising and completely missing their target audience. In the case of sci-fi, most of us are more responsive to online marketing campaigns and this film has the online presence of an Amish priest.
In the case of sci-fi, most of us are more responsive to online marketing campaigns and this film has the online presence of an Amish priest.
Even then, who is this movie for? Scifi nerds who liked Cloud Atlas but wished it was more incoherent and Roman themed?
aubrey plaza was on the daily show talking about it, so i assume they were doing the usual TV talk show tour.
Pluto Nash cost over 100 million dollars to make?
You need to adjust the Pluto Nash budget for iflation as well. It was a ~$100 million budget in 2002.
Makes me wonder how many other movies did worse when we consider adjusting their budget to inflation.
Maybe if the trailer didn’t tell you how great and misunderstood Coppola and his works have been and how stupid people were for panning them when they came out, more people would have been compelled to see it. Not that it was pretentious, just arrogant to say hey come watch this this sure fire masterpiece. Also it looks like politics mixed with Inception so maybe too much for people to bother right now? Having said all that I would like to see it, just don’t need to go to the theater for this one.
Having said all that I would like to see it, just don’t need to go to the theater for this one.
From what little I’ve heard, there’s a 4th-wall-breaking scene that involves one of the characters interacting with an audience member (the theater apparently has someone come in and participate). So if nothing else, I guess you could see it in theaters for the novelty?
My theater didn’t do that. There was one segment that was framed a bit differently, which I suspect is where the interaction would have been, but it played more like a short press conference and had no interaction.
This most certainly did not happen in my viewing. I am now curious what scene this would have been or if it was just cut out.
Also, if your paraphrasing is accurate and we’re not playing a game of telephone here, regardless of how past experiences were later treated that’s kinda like saying “you’ll probably hate this unless you’re the kind of person who’ll still only appreciate it once a few critics tell you to in a few years.”
And they were made-up or misattributed quotes, too.
https://variety.com/2024/film/news/megalopolis-trailer-quotes-movie-critics-1236114212/
This is the first time I’m hearing about this movie, likely terrible advertising plan
Really? I’ve been hearing about it for months. It was having trouble finding a distributor for theaters, despite the budget and the star power, which was seen as a bad sign. It’s being marketed as Francis Ford Coppola’s last big budget movie.
Pretty sad, this was apparently Coppola’s drram movie he always wanted to make
I wonder if it’s any good, all I hear is how little money it made like that means anything to anyone but the producers.
The only people I have seen saying good things about it, are the same people who think hating what’s popular is a personality trait.
He sexually harassed extras on set. I’m glad this pretentious asshole loses his money.
Not really sad. Coppola is an artist, first and foremost, and he said that he doesn’t care whether the film will be financially successful. It is a passion project financed at least partially from his own money, and to be his magnum opus.
Promotional campaign brought to you by the same team that worked on Concord.
Are these Studios just getting ripped off by marketing? I literally never saw an ad for this. The first time I saw a trailer for this film was in an article about how bad it was bombing. Where was all the marketing money going?
The trailer made it seem like the kind of pretentiously boring mess that the director seemed to think had some profound message that I tend to really dislike.
Or put more simply, “Looks like the director set $120 million on fire to win Oscars, not make something entertaining.”
From what I’m hearing, one of the antagonists is a thinly veiled Rupert Murdoch. Sounds like $120 million to pretentiously explain that Fox News is bad to an audience who figured that out two decades ago.
It got a lot of controversial press before its release and I can’t really recall hearing what the movie is about or it being any good.
Something something new Rome something something super powers that are useless something something the end
“… so you see, Borderlands is actually doing just fine in its theatrical release.” -Randy Pitchford
The Rifftracks version of this movie is going to be so fire.
Yes!!!
The worst part about this movie is you can’t even see the original in search results anymore. Like it never existed.
Adam Driver?
The one, the only.
I was honestly surprised it was out already. I’ve seen a few memes about it the past few months, but my theater hasn’t even run the trailer. It’s also not even in their coming soon listing, which it should be considering it’s supposedly releasing in december here in the Netherlands.
I doubt they’re bothering to run it at all with the reception this got so far. Not unless it manages to capture a ‘so bad you gotta see this train wreck’ cult status between now and december…
Has he made a good movie in the last 30 years? I loved Dracula but I can’t think of anything since then
