this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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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!

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

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)

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 month ago (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

And it’s Adam Driver.

[–] altima_neo 45 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah I never heard of this.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Agreed, not heard of it outside Lemmy. Perhaps I’ve insulated myself from ads a little too well.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

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?

[–] altima_neo 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is the first time I'm hearing about this movie, likely terrible advertising plan

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (7 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

If I wait for the Torrent release an FBI agent is going to come to my house for that?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

They had this at the screening I went to. I wonder what they'll do for the home release version?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

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.”

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Pretty sad, this was apparently Coppola's drram movie he always wanted to make

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

its annoyingly complex with little payoff. i know watching it a few times will bring it into focus, but thats a weird requirement.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

He sexually harassed extras on set. I'm glad this pretentious asshole loses his money.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (7 children)

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).

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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."

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Promotional campaign brought to you by the same team that worked on Concord.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Something something new Rome something something super powers that are useless something something the end

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The worst part about this movie is you can't even see the original in search results anymore. Like it never existed.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

"... so you see, Borderlands is actually doing just fine in its theatrical release." -Randy Pitchford

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It's a t square. It's to get straight lines over a distance

No idea why he's holding it

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

"A Fable"

The pretension

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The Rifftracks version of this movie is going to be so fire.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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