There are few names in Hollywood history bigger than Francis Ford Coppola, the director of Academy Award-winning and critically acclaimed movies like “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now,” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”
His new movie, a sci-fi film called “Megalopolis,” hit something of a roadblock this week, after its trailer was released on YouTube. The film is slated to release through Lionsgate on Sept. 27. Usually when I write about a movie, I share a trailer. This time, unfortunately, the trailer is the story…
Here’s a little background on the movie’s path to this point:
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.
Apparently, the promotions people may have been hesitant to use as blurbs some of those not-too-positive reviews from the premier, French film event for Coppola’s movie. But that led to an embarrassing fail, as the NY Post explained (link above):
The trailer for the latest Francis Ford Coppola movie, “Megalopolis,” premiered on Wednesday.
Soon after, Lionsgate studio recalled the trailer.
After taking the trailer down from the company’s YouTube page, it gave a statement via a spokesperson to the Post. It’s quite an unusual apology:
“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.
We screwed up. We are sorry.”
Now, what happened with the trailer and the critics?
….[T]he trailer showed scathing critical commentary about Coppola’s past films, including “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”
…
In one clip, [the late New Yorker film critic Pauline] Kael is quoted saying that the Oscar-winning “The Godfather” is “diminished by its artsiness.”
But film buffs who know their history caught on right away that something was off. Kael’s review of the movie was not negative. And none of the other quotes could be found in reviews, either. They were made up.
Lionsgate pulls Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ trailer featuring fake quotes from film critics: ‘We screwed up’ https://t.co/Ce41hydUdm pic.twitter.com/xBVa0tcA6J
— New York Post (@nypost) August 22, 2024
Kyle Buchanan, an author who writes about film for The New York Times, took an educated guess:
All the “mean” critics’ quotes in the MEGALOPOLIS trailer were made up and likely came from an erroneous ChatGPT answer. Incredible https://t.co/bKrRoFvBM9
— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) August 21, 2024
If you can’t read his post, it says:
All the “mean” critics’ quotes in the MEGALOPOLIS trailer were made up and likely came from an erroneous ChatGPT answer. Incredible
ChatGPT, for anyone who isn’t familiar, is an AI program for people seeking a hand with writing projects and idea generation. It certainly isn’t meant to replace real movie reviewers with any “erroneous answers” it spits out. What a mess.
