Lauren Sarner
It was a mega blunder.
The trailer for the latest Francis Ford Coppola movie, “Megalopolis,” premiered on Wednesday.
Soon after, Lionsgate studio recalled the trailer.
“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis. 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,” a Lionsgate spokesperson told The Post.
“We screwed up. We are sorry.”
In the trailer, the on-screen narration said, “True genius is often misunderstood. One filmmaker has always been ahead of his time.”
After that message, the trailer showed scathing critical commentary about Coppola’s past films, including “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”
The allegedly scathing reviews were from the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael, the Village Voice’s Andrew Sarris and legendary movie critic Roger Ebert.
In one clip, Kael is quoted saying that the Oscar-winning “The Godfather” is “diminished by its artsiness.”
But, viewers on social media soon noticed that the so-called quotes from “critics” seemed to be fabricated.
“Did they just straight up fabricate that Pauline Kael quote? I’m reading her review, and I don’t see it. Also, she loved the movie lol,” one observer commented on X, formerly Twitter.
“Why are they making up quotes to get mad about in the Megalopolis trailer?” another baffled viewer wrote.
“All the ‘mean’ critics’ quotes in the MEGALOPOLIS trailer were made up and likely came from an erroneous ChatGPT answer. Incredible,” New York Times columnist Kyle Buchanan commented.
The trailer has since been removed from Lionsgate’s YouTube channel.
The movie is a sci-fi epic and a passion project from Coppola, 85, set in a crumbling metropolis called New Rome. The cast includes Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.
Coppola reportedly spent $120 million of his own money to make “Megalopolis,” which began as a script he started 40 years ago.
It had been languishing on his to-do list since 1983, and Coppola told Vanity Fair that he rewrote the script 300 times.
“Megalopolis” got mixed reviews when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Vanity Fair called it a “dreary boondoggle“ and the Guardian described it as “megabloated.”
A Coppola friend told The Post in June that the director felt “very upset that they didn’t give him an award” at Cannes.
The trailer incident is just the latest bump in the road for the movie, which has had a troubled rollout.
The movie has also been besieged by alleged turbulence behind the scenes.
Unnamed sources claimed to the Guardian that Coppola tried to kiss topless performers in the movie’s nightclub scene and retreated to his trailer to smoke weed. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Coppola lost his entire art department due to a combination of firings and resignations.
After Variety obtained videos of Coppola on set with the extras, a spokesperson for the director declined to comment on the clips or the claims about his behavior.
“It was absolute madness, being on set,” a talent representative whose client was among those allegedly fired told THR in a January 2023 report.
“The script was a mess; it was a bad idea from the beginning,” a Hollywood insider told The Post in June.
They added, “Francis was all over town trying to get money. The script was a mishmash. Francis was going to make this movie no matter what. He tried raising money for it, but he couldn’t. So, Francis took his own $120 million to make this movie. It’s crazy.”
“Megalopolis” is scheduled to hit theaters Sept. 27.
This post was originally posted by NYPost
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