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.
And it’s Adam Driver.
Yeah I never heard of this.
Agreed, not heard of it outside Lemmy. Perhaps I’ve insulated myself from ads a little too well.
I only heard about this because Coppola gave an interview about hiring “cancelled” actors so he didn’t seem “woke”.
Yeah no thanks, FFC. I still remember you defending and bankrolling a CONVICTED child predator.
Coppola was heavily involved in the production of the film where some of the abuse happened, and during the fallout he allegedly tried to sue the victim of the abuse for breach of contract
I’ve mostly heard about the controversies (the fake AI quotes in the trailer, some alleged #metoo stuff on set, …). Reviews seem very mixed, some reviewers hate it, others love it, which makes me think some of them just don’t ‘get’ it?
Yeah but usually if something is good, people will want to discuss it. This has gotten no hype, no post release discussion. It’s a ghost.
Really odd for such a big budget 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.
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I think you’re reading into a tv interview way too much.
Watch her other interviews. She’s always nervous and fidgety. She claims she gets uncomfortable doing those staged interviews for press circuits.
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.
Pluto Nash cost over 100 million dollars to make?
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.
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?
Ah, so from what I’m reading it’s confusing now, but will be more confusing at home with a broken 4th wall break segment.
If I wait for the Torrent release an FBI agent is going to come to my house for that?
They had this at the screening I went to. I wonder what they’ll do for the home release version?
I think that was just in Cannes or something.
Edit: It seems I’m wrong! Basically it’s up to the cinema to include it, but it doesn’t change all that much. I had my information from reading a review by a reviewer who thought he had witnessed something completely unique.
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.
If you want masterclass 4th Wall, Watch Fleabag. Great series
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/
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?
Every second or third post on Lemmy is about privacy or ad-blocking or piracy or pi-holes or bitching about ad injection.
Not that any of that is a bad thing. (The bitching isn’t bad, the things are.)
But you can’t be surprised when you don’t hear about shit. When you reclaim your eye-holes from Madison avenue you need to seek things out.
I’m not sure where on Earth you got the impression that I only consume media through Lemmy.
I’m not sure where on earth you got the impression that I thought that.
On Lemmy.
Where on lemmy did I suggest that?
I don’t know, lemmy is where he got that impression. It may or may not be an accurate one.
yeah but this is a movie, not a product. we usually hear about them from people, not necessarily ads. we might not see many ads but other people we talk to and hear from do, and practically no one in my life and media consumption talks about it. compare that to Barbie.
Talking to other people is part of what I mean by seeking things out. If you do all you can to avoid ads, along with the 99% that are useless you also block the 1% that you might actually find useful.
For example; I recently heard about this show from a friend that is right up my alley. When I looked up a trailer it’s the kind of thing that seeing a commercial once would have caught my eye and ensured I watch it. She was surprised I hadn’t heard of it because it’s on a network with a few shows she knows I like and they’ve been pimping it pretty hard for a while. Because I block the bullshit I either have to hope cool stuff comes up in conversation or seek out new stuff elsewhere.
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.
its annoyingly complex with little payoff. i know watching it a few times will bring it into focus, but thats a weird requirement.
Not with Coppola, Apocalypse Now requires several watches, including the re-releases, directors cut, etc
It’s bad. If it was good, the story would have been pretty different.
Obviously some people will still like it. But even those will have to admit it’s an incredible mess, and it shows why no company wanted to invest in it.
https://wikiless.chaosmos.io/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films?lang=en
Clearly /s
My money is still on it being a masterpiece and people being morons.
Edit: updated wikiless instance
I saw it hoping this was the case, but sadly it’s just not very good. I loved the visuals, the ambition, and his commitment to try and breakout of traditional storytelling methods, but the ham-fisted handling of the subject matter really ruined it for me. By all means see it for yourself and be your own judge but I wouldn’t go in expecting an underrated masterpiece.
wikiless.org is using a TLS cert that expired in February.
I don’t know the project very well but if they’ve been giving cert errors for half a year it might be time to link directly to Wikipedia.
I’m on LibRedirect so I didn’t give it much of a thought.
Apparently ( https://github.com/Metastem/wikiless ) the domain is supposed to be https://wikiless.chaosmos.io
https://wikiless.chaosmos.io/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films?lang=en <- this seems good, I’ll edit the previous link.
What’s wrong with just linking to Wikipedia?
Personally, a healthy habit not to rely on lazy patterns, and it possibly helps people that may be browsing from a place where wikipedia is censored.
But a much less stupid explanation can be found here: https://github.com/whereismybugfix/wikiless#why-i-should-use-wikiless-instead-of-wikipedia
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.
It’s bad. It’s bad and we’ve been knowing this for months, as it premiered in some festival.
It’s so bad no distributors wanted any piece of the cake (because the necessary costs are astronomical).
AFAIK, the movie received a 10-minute standing ovation at Cannes. It is an art film first and foremost, and probably not for the general audience that flocks to the same old, boring formulaic movies a la Marvel & co.
Every movie at Cannes gets a ten minute standing ovation. That’s normal.
I’m excited to see this though. But I’m not going to go to the theatre for it.
But I’m not going to go to the theatre for it.
Same here, and frankly I will never again think it is surprising that a theatrical release is underperforming. Doesn’t matter which film. Theaters are underperforming because of many factors.
I can buy my own copy of the film for less than it would take for me and one other person to see it together once in a theater.
Which is why for someone like me who always hated theaters for the crowded seats and annoying people and noises, it’s never been better! Subscription to see movies whenever I want, and usually less than 10 people in the theater. It’s great.
Yeah, I can understand that. While I will mourn the death of the theater experience, it has been a very slow death. It has not really been the experience I remember for a long time.
A 10-minute ovation is not a notable statistic at Cannes. The Beaver got a 10-minute ovation. I dare anyone to remember even one thing about The Beaver without looking it up.
Not only that, they would give FFC one at Cannes for his name alone.
Edit: what I remember about “The Beaver” doesn’t fit with Cannes, maybe AVN awards :P
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.
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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.
Thinly veiled Rupert Murdoch?
Bah, 007 did it 27 years ago.
I really wanted Megalopolis to be good, but I never had high hopes for it. I’ll probably still watch it eventually because it has a bunch of actors in it that I love + I’m a sucker for future megacities in movies and games (I’m still not over the fact that they cancelled the Star Wars game that was supposed to take place on the lower levels of Coruscant)
I still don’t know if it was overly pretentious garbage or an enlightening allegory of the current state of the world. But watching it was definitely an experience. The cast is great, and I found it visually beautiful and interesting.
I think its firmly both. There are a lot of great ideas in the movie, and they come across really well when you discuss it. But its also a mess of a film that cares more about allegory and metaphor than narrative.
But its also a mess of a film that cares more about allegory and metaphor than narrative.
So…a Terrence Malick film?
The Thin Red Line had a pretty straightforward narrative: dudes getting shot and blowed up.
I liked it. It was kind of a mess, but it was interesting, thought provoking, and visually very good. As much as there are improvements that could be made or changes to make it more palatable to a wider audience, I’d prefer the weird way it is, and especially movies like this over the next Disney/Corporate Movie Product TM
Promotional campaign brought to you by the same team that worked on Concord.
No shit, had seen only one weird trailer for this movie before it came out.
And Dredd with Karl Urban (which is a shame, the movie didn’t get the attention it deserved).
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 worst part about this movie is you can’t even see the original in search results anymore. Like it never existed.
Are matey, I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, I gottit
I had to add original to get it to come up before 3 pages deep. 😟
I have no idea what this movie is about. So I watched the trailer.
Star Wars Episode XIII: Avengers of Ben Hur?
I have no idea what this movie is about.
I also have zero idea what the movie poster is. It looks like Adam Driver is holding a Pizza Hut logo on a stick in front of the world’s most generic mess of golden polygons. I guess that’s some sort of construction tool?
It’s a t square. It’s to get straight lines over a distance
No idea why he’s holding it
Its not a compass and a L square, so you get architect/engineer but not masonic?
Looks like a drafting square to be more specific.
For the old school draftsman working with pencil on a table.
Yup that’s exactly what it is. Which nobody would know even 30+ years ago, much less now.
The poster remembers me of the 1984 Apple commercial, whicht also fits bulding a better future. But that’s totally wrong.
Marketing?
The Rifftracks version of this movie is going to be so fire.
Yes!!!
