Francis Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ Screened For First Time Today For Distributors At CityWalk IMAX

At least he has finished it! I thought it might be like "The Other Side of the Wind" and not be seen until long after the director died.

I hope it’s good and does well. “Full of ideas” doesn’t exactly scream great film.

I am so very much looking forward to this! Almost sounds a little bit like The Fountainhead, which to me is not a bad thing.

One response.

All the stars that were reportedly going to be in it dropped out. It’s a d list cast.

He sold his winery to finance the film?? Oh lord.

Even by today's standards $120 million is a pretty big budget.

[quote]....MEGALOPOLIS being assessed as having "zero commercial prospects" is a ringing endorsement.

Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!

I read another piece that said it’s too experimental and unlikely to find a distributor, at least not a major studio. They said maybe Neon would want it similar to Ferrari (definitely a diss on Neon).

No, R6. He took out a loan on part of one of his wineries. He’s a billionaire. This didn’t hurt him in any way and he’ll most likely make it back very easily.

There is no world in which Adam Driver, Laurence Fishburne, Dustin Hoffmann, and Aubrey Plaza are d list R5.

[QUOTE] two hours and 13 minutes

At least he kept it relatively short. It sounded like it might be another 4 hour “epic” in need of an intermission.

its swell that plaza has this on her resume now

This man hasn't made a good movie in decades and people are expecting a great film? I'd say it's highly unlikely this will be anything but a disappointment. Look at his IMDB.

Wow what megawattage! Adam Driver and Giancarlo Esposito? Can Ray Romano be far away?

A lot of damning with faint praise in that review.

Not a great sign if they still don’t have a distributor.

I heard it's this year's Little Miss Sunshine!

Too bad I've been dead for five years.

There goes my inheritance...

Frankly Sofia, you deserve nothing.

Maybe this is Francis's 'Eyes Wide Shut.'

Adam Driver, oy! No thanks.

[quote] There is no world in which Adam Driver, Laurence Fishburne, Dustin Hoffmann, and Aubrey Plaza are d list

Yes they are. Dustin Hoffman was cancelled due to sexual assault years ago. He can barely find work. Laurence Fishburn will do anything for a buck. Adam Driver and Aubrey Plaza are tv actors. Driver hasn’t had a hit outside of Star Wars.

The original cast for this was name after name. He’s scrapping the bottom of the barrel with this cast after all the others dropped out.

[quote] its swell that plaza has this on her resume now

She won’t want this on it.

This reminds me of the Orson Welles disaster “ The Other Side of the Wind”.

My father had IBS and believe me, “The Other Side of the Wind” was NOT a place where you wanted to be.

Why didn't anyone tell me this is a reimagining of the Catilinarian conspiracy? It's sure to be a crowd pleaser!

[quote]R10 He took out a loan on part of one of his wineries. He’s a billionaire.

Where did all that money come from? Is the winery that successful?

Megalopolis Teaser Trailer released 5/4/24.

r30 Editing feels drawn out for the sake of being drawn out. And Driver looks like Milla Jovovich as Joan of Arc.

I thought it was pretty damn good.

I'd watch it!

I'd rather see something new and experimental instead of the predictable tropes in movies now. We need more creativity.

If it’s visually interesting like a Blade Runner movie I’d see it just for that but I’m going to have to wait for the trailer because that teaser was too cryptic.

Trailer got me interested.

Autism Driver... why? Imagine an attractive and interesting young actor in the same role. Lost opportunity to maybe launch a new star...

It's Diver because the old-school directors of Coppola's generation believe he's about the best actor out there.

Scorsese on Driver:

Adam Driver - a face for radio.

Driver”s look is so distracting I can’t see anything he’s in.

[QUOTE] Scorsese on Driver:

Isn’t that an insult to his boy Leo? Or is Scorsese saying that Leo is too old to be considered the same acting generation?

R41 Traitor!

[quote] R33 I'd watch it!

That's not the same as "I'd go see it."

I was really excited to see The Other Side of The Wind. And then I saw it.

Second trailer just dropped.

I think it looks interesting, but I can't imagine it will have mass appeal. Poor Francis is going to lose his shirt. Again.

r46, Don’t sell Francis short. It may be the film of the year especially if it gets wide critical acclaim and does well at Cannes. The trailer looks very similar intriguing.

What language is that trailer in?

The trailer has me hooked....I want to see this. I really hate Adam Driver; I don't know why, but u know when u just dislike an actor. I do love dystopian movies.

[quote]“I feel I was a part of history. Megalopolis is a brilliant, visionary masterpiece,” said the director Gregory Nava after the screening. “I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t do anything for the rest of the day.” An anonymous viewer at a London screening went even further: “This film is like Einstein and relativity in 1905, Picasso and Guernica in 1937 – it’s a date in the history of cinema.”

Getting a Fellini feeling

R38 Marty is wrong. “Silence” was such a chore to sit through in the theater.

The new trailer is excellent, but the reports of the movie being not commercial or too weird don't seem that hard to believe.

I'm in.

I got a Criswell of "Ed Wood" vibe and sound from the first syllable of Lawrence Fishbourne's narration, and I mean that as a compliment.

I was ready to sign up until I realized it wasn't called "Pegalotpolis."

Oh, boy. I was intrigued after the first teaser but the second trailer in R45 is deflating. It looks like one of those ultra weird, trippy movies I don’t enjoy. The critics will hail it as a tour de force but I’m usually too feeble minded for these films. I’ll probably watch it once and never see it again, just like Inception.

47 years in the making.

Looks like an insufferable art film you watch 5 minutes of in a museum.

It's in competition at Cannes this week. It premieres there on Friday, May 17th, so we'll have more audience reactions and reviews after that screening.

how's his wine doing? any good? have you tried?

About as warm as the Fountainhead. It will have mixed reviews.

I hate these movies that leave you feeling NOT GOOD.

He directed a hardcore porn film in the 1970s under an alias. He even went to the Porn Film Awards back then to socialize and have sex with porn starlets. He's always been a closet perv with ties to the porn industry.

The imposing title FROM FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA no longer means what it once did after all those turkeys. The trailer looks expensive and incomprehensible, the kind that announces a movie that will lay a giant egg. And it has some of the names I hate the most in film: Driver, Hoffman, Voight, Getty.

No thanks.

This looks interesting as fuck. Cannot wait. Will it be commercially successful? I sincerely doubt it and know that Coppola doesn’t give a shit. He’s old, he’s been successful, he just wants to make a film that matters to other filmmakers, public be damned. And what is the general public but a bunch of morons -we all know this. I just hope I can catch it in the cinema. If not, whatever. The conversation is one of the top five films I’ve ever seen. And I’m not even talking about the Godfather which I love, or the Godfather 2, which I also love. I’m not even a fan of Apocalypse Now. Yea driver is hideous, especially compared to the beauty of a young Pacino. But he does have That Voice. Anyway, it’s not yet another sequel or CGI’d to fuck Superhero or Dinosaur movie.

THIS... is not CGI's to fuck, R64?

This absolutely is CG'd to hell and back, r64 needs to put his monocles on and watch the trailer again. I'm sure it'll be touched up some more before theatrical release, but there's A LOT of CG in this movie.

Yeah ok I didn’t think that through. Fair play. It’s still nice to see something that might, possibly, maybe, perhaps, be slightly different from the three hour Star Wars Marvel cinematic universe splat.

The film may have CGI effects, but Coppola apparently was more comfortable doing old-timey special effects, which frustrated his team at times.

[quote] Adam Driver’s first day on set was particularly memorable, a source suggests. One aspect of the story involves Driver’s character’s body fusing with some futuristic organic material. Rather than using digital techniques, Coppola wanted to achieve the effect through old-school methods, using projectors and mirrors, much as he had done on Dracula, 30 years earlier. “That’s great, except nobody can move,” says the crew member.

[quote] “So they basically strapped Adam Driver into a chair for six hours, and they literally took a $100 projector and projected an image on the side of his head. I’m all for experimentation, but this is really what you want to do the first day with your $10m actor?” The effect would have been quick and easy to create digitally, they say. “So he Coppola spends literally half of a day on what could have been done in 10 minutes.”

OP aka Megaflopolis

Correction on R59. The film WILL be shown on Friday morning, May 17th, but there will be a showing before that on Thursday, May 16th at 7 pm (France's time.)

So there should be reactions or reviews on Thursday (May 16th).

ENTERTAINMENT LAWYER 05/15 **4**

If you think what this permanent A list did to women on the set of his most recent movie, you should hear about what happened on that movie he filmed in the jungle.

Francis Ford Coppola/”Megalopolis”/”Apocalypse Now”

Megalopolis reviews after the Cannes screening.

One Youtube reviewer is confused by the movie.

[quote] I am lost for words with Megalopolis. If Coppola is happy with it then I guess that’s something? 🤨🤷🏼‍♂️ I left it feeling totally discombobulated and bewildered by it. How does a 120M movie look this cheap?

[quote] I honestly don’t know how I’m supposed to review this film cause I’m not even sure if I could tell you what the plot is.

[quote] I’d say Audrey Plaza leaves it the most unscathed because of her already built-in brand of weirdness.

Vanity Fair:

[quote] This is the junkiest of junk-drawer movies, a slapped together hash of Coppola’s many disparate inspirations. What really tanks the movie, though, is its datedness.

Ouch!

Like Warren Beatty, his last hurrah turns out to be a last gasp.

[QUOTE] I am lost for words with Megalopolis. If Coppola is happy with it then I guess that’s something? 🤨🤷🏼‍♂️ I left it feeling totally discombobulated and bewildered by it. How does a 120M movie look this cheap?

[QUOTE]I honestly don’t know how I’m supposed to review this film cause I’m not even sure if I could tell you what the plot is.

That’s how I felt after watching the second trailer.

R73, look at the person you’re posting. They’re a Zoomer with the IQ in the single digits.

[quote] This is the junkiest of junk-drawer movies, a slapped together hash of Coppola’s many disparate inspirations. What really tanks the movie, though, is its datedness.

Translation: where are the superheroes?

It’s basically a David Lynch film.

But what are the positive or good reviews saying?

[quote] Megalopolis might be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy every single batshit second of it.

[quote] It is exactly the movie that Coppola set out to make -- uncompromising, uniquely intellectual, unabashedly romantic, broadly satirical yet remarkably sincere about wanting not just brave new worlds but better ones.

[quote] Coppola breaks many of the cardinal rules of filmmaking in the film’s 138 minutes but it upholds the most important one: it is never, ever boring, and it will inspire just as many artists as the audiences it will alienate.

MEGAFLOPOLIS:

TIMES (UK) This is 138 stultifying minutes of ill-conceived themes, half-finished scenes, nails-along-the-blackboard performances, word-salad dialogue and ugly visuals all seemingly in search of a story that isn’t there.

THE GUARDIAN This is a passion project without passion: a bloated, boring and bafflingly shallow film, full of high-school-valedictorian verities about humanity’s future.

I saw it today and yes it’s a masterpiece!

Given this, I won't feel sorry for FFC when the movie tanks and he loses his shirt. He's well known for being a total pig with actresses, especially young starlets who are desperate to have a career.

Wait, it is about an architect that can control time?

HARD PASS.

Sometimes expectations unfairly ruin a movie

(^.^) the ruination of this film has nothing to do with expectations

I wonder if jury President Greta Gerwig feels pressured to give it the best picture prize at Cannes.

r87 I seriously doubt that. There have been rumblings about this being a flop for some time before the festival.

Divisive doesn't mean flop. All the virtuous Marys who live to see people who don't make their own little worlds feel safe and comfortable seem to be living to bring Coppola down. Stay triggered, dolls. Nobody gives a shit about your righteousness.

stay sober R89

Who was in the original cast, apart from Zendaya in the Natalie Emmanuel role?

In 2022 Indiewire talked about the possible cast for Megalopolis.

[quote] Cate Blanchett, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, and Forest Whitaker have all been linked to the film, although no cast is officially confirmed.

Indiewire (in 2022) talked to Coppola about how he personally finances some of his movies, including $120 for Megalopolis.

[quote] “I had won five Oscars and was the hottest film director in town and walked in with ‘Apocalypse Now’ and said, ‘I’d like to make this next,’” he said. “I own ‘Apocalypse Now.’ Do you know why I own ‘Apocalypse Now’? Because no one else wanted it.” His bet on “Apocalypse Now” clearly paid off, even if a similar experience self-funding “One From the Heart” left him in a $26 million hole that he spent over a decade working himself out of. But after making a fortune on his vineyards, the octogenarian director is not worried about making this investment back.

[quote] “I couldn’t care less about the financial impact whatsoever,” he said. “It means nothing to me.”

That's a very good attitude to have, especially since he apparently did not tailor this film for the enjoyment of the average audience member.

(Article at link is a 2022 interview with Coppola.)

^^ $120 million

Fuck the stuck up haters! I will see this on opening night.

Personally I think the film sounds interesting thought I'll never see it in a theater.

I watched the trailer and it didn’t look bad at all. Of course, trailers can hide things.

[quote]Driver”s look is so distracting I can’t see anything he’s in.

And diCaprio looks like a festering boil, Depp looks like the inside of a potato chip bag, Damon looks like someone you can imagine ever having not been hard to look at, Downey looks like the smug one-note prick he is, and...

Who are all these handsome big name actors that could have saved the role we haven't seen yet?

Some Rottentomatoes reviewers observe:

[quote] Perhaps the kindest thing one can say about Megalopolis is that it will probably remain largely unwatched and be quickly forgotten.

[quote] Seconds, minutes, hours and (it seems, anyway) days assert their presence unforgivingly as the film staggers its way to nowhere worth going.

Pauline Kael was a huge fan of The Godfather parts I and II but her feelings about Coppola change by the next decade.

'Most of the emotional force went out of Coppola's movie making in the late 1970s when he was working on Apocalypse Now and it has never fully come back. Pictures such as One from the Heart, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Tucker and the Cotton Club were preceded by so much buildup in the press that early audiences kept being stunned to find an empty shell of a movie'

If he had only cast Nic Cage in it as the lead it might have been interesting.

The reaction to this movie is crazy. Some are calling it a masterpiece despite its noticeable flaws, while others are saying it's the worst movie ever. There's a fourth wall-breaking moment in the film when a live actor speaks to Adam Driver's character; how that will be accomplished in IMAX remains to be seen.

They’re hysterically over Shia being cast and Francis having a woman sit on his lap while directing a scene. It’s virtue signaling.

It’s a film for those who have a triple digit IQ.

One of the brothers from the Oscar Expert Youtube channel went to Cannes, and did this video review. He so wanted to like it, and recommends that people see it for themselves, but problems.

(^.^) Pictures such as One from the Heart, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Tucker and the Cotton Club were preceded by so much buildup in the press that early audiences kept being stunned to find an empty shell of a movie'

[Quote] It’s a film for those who have a triple digit IQ.

More likely a film for those who admired the emperor's new clothes

Megalopolis = Babylon

Megalopolis=Babble-on

My favorite thing about this movie is that Aubrey Plaza's character, the mistress of Adam Driver's character, is named "Wow Platinum."

Apparently, someone briefly comes in front of the cinema screen and asks Driver a question during the Q&A segment in the movie, and Driver responds to him. Critics in Cannes said it was more WTF than cool because it only happened that one time during the movie and no one in the audience knew exactly how to react. Either feature more of that schtick or don't have it at all. A mess.

[quote] He so wanted to like it, and recommends that people see it for themselves, but problems.

Oh, dear.

R111, wtf are you talking about?

I’m supposed to take a review from someone calling themselves Brother Bro seriously?

Why not R114 He's very articulate and intelligent no matter the name. His observations on the film The Zone of Interest are brilliant.

It finally found a distributor, but they just released and recalled the new trailer for phony movie review quotes.

Bump.

Sure was weird.

Gonna watch the cam version tonight, pray for me.

Coppola is not a visionary filmmaker, and he hasn't made an interesting film in decades.

I’m not even interested in watching it at this point. Poor Francis.

I just saw it. I love most of the work of Director Francis Ford Coppola but this was absolute crap. Please save your money and wait for streaming.

R122, thanks. That’s actually what I plan to do. I toyed with going to see it but it looks just too terrible to sit through.

Francis is on Letterboxd giving it a good review.

When I said I’m not interested in watching it, I meant on streaming. There’s no way in hell I’d go to the movie theater for this.