Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ plays to near-empty theaters

LOS ANGELES – There is no kind way to put it: Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” died on arrival over the weekend.

Coppola, 85, spent decades on the avant-garde fable, ultimately selling part of his wine business to raise the necessary funds – about $120 million in production costs and another $20 million or so in marketing and distribution expenses. But moviegoers rejected the film: Ticket sales from Thursday night through Sunday will total roughly $4 million in North America, according to analysts, slightly below worst-case scenario prerelease projections.

“Megalopolis” played in nearly 2,000 theaters in the United States and Canada. As of Saturday evening, it was on pace to place sixth in the weekend box office derby, behind even “Devara Part 1,” a poorly reviewed, three-hour, Telugu-language action drama that was available in about 1,000 theaters.

“Megalopolis” is about a brilliant architect (played by Adam Driver) who wants a society to lift itself out of the gutter. Ticketbuyers gave the film a D+ grade in CinemaScore exit polls. It is rare for a big-budget movie from a major director to get less than a B-.

Adam Fogelson, the top movie executive at Lionsgate, which distributed “Megalopolis,” said the company was “proud to partner” with Coppola to give the film “the wide theatrical release it deserves.”

“Like all true art, it will be viewed and judged by movie audiences over time,” Fogelson added.

A spokesperson for Coppola declined to comment.

In the 1980s, when Coppola first began to develop the film, “Megalopolis” may well have had a chance in theaters. It was a time in Hollywood when ambitious films for thinking people could be eased into a few theaters and allowed to build an audience over months, adding more screens week by week and sometimes playing for a year or more. Hollywood could afford to take it slow in part because moviegoing dominated leisure time: Not only was there no internet yet, cable TV and video games were still in their relative infancy.

Today, movies are typically booked into as many theaters as possible as quickly as possible, especially if reviews are weak. Studios use this distribution tactic to capitalize on expensive marketing campaigns, which are intended to open a narrow window of interest from consumers. If the masses do not immediately materialize, theater chains redirect screens toward other movies. (On Friday, the Warner Bros. sequel “Joker: Folie à Deux” will arrive in more than 4,000 theaters.)

“Megalopolis” almost didn’t make it into theaters. In the spring, when Coppola began shopping for a distributor, every big studio turned him down. Some executives from these studios admired the movie for its artistic risks. But none saw much hope for it in theaters. (Eventually, Lionsgate agreed to distribute the film for a fee.) More and more, original films are sent directly to streaming services – if they get made at all. Theaters are increasingly for remakes and sequels.

“Like it or not, movie theaters are not where this audience gets this kind of entertainment any more,” David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers, said in an email.

Coppola is the second Hollywood legend in three months to learn this lesson the hard way. Over the summer, Kevin Costner’s costly “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” flatlined at the box office. Plans to release the second chapter in theaters were canceled.

In Hollywood, where backbiting and schadenfreude run rampant, some agents and publicists have privately referred to “Megalopolis” as “Megaflopolis” for months. The film seemed to be snakebit from the start, suffering from off-screen problems that included crew firings in the middle of production, a libel suit and a bungled promotional trailer.

But most of the film industry winced at the dismal weekend turnout. Many people in leadership positions in Hollywood were inspired to pursue cinema as a career because of Coppola’s masterpieces from the 1970s, including “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.” To see one of their heroes from that era crash and burn is a painful reminder of how much the movie business has atrophied.

For the weekend, the No. 1 movie in North America was “The Wild Robot” (Universal/DreamWorks Animation), which was on pace to collect a sturdy $35 million over its first three days in theaters. “The Wild Robot” cost $78 million to make. It received euphoric reviews.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Warner Bros.) was second, taking in about $16 million, for a four-week domestic total of roughly $250 million. “Transformers One” (Paramount) was third, collecting an estimated $9 million, for a two-week domestic total of about $40 million.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.