Francis Ford Coppola pulls Megalopolis trailer after caught faking critic quotes: ‘We screwed up’

You know those quotes from reviewers and critics that flash up in movie trailers? They’re supposed to help a studio market an upcoming release.

But the American distributors of Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating epic Megalopolis chose an unusual twist on the traditional format.

Instead of picking choice words from any positive reviews for Megalopolis’ premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, it chose to run negative quotes from revered critics who “got it wrong” on Coppola’s older films including The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and Dracula.

“A true genius is often misunderstood,” a voiceover intoned.

Some of the quotes include “A spectacular failure”, “An epic piece of trash”, “A beautiful mess” and “A sloppy, self-indulgent movie”.

The quotes were attributed to the likes of legendary American critics of the past including Pauline Kael of The New Yorker, Rex Reed of Daily News, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times and Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly.

Here’s the problem – the quotes were made up. Those very real critics never wrote those very fake things.

When it comes to “spectacular failures”, this one is a doozy.

Vulture’s respected critic Bilge Ebiri appears to be the first to have noticed that none of those quotes were in the still-available reviews from Kael and Sarris, who have both since died.

The American distributor Lionsgate quickly owned up to the mea culpa.

In a statement, a spokesperson said, “Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis. We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and (Coppola’s production company) American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”

The official uploads of the trailer have since been pulled from YouTube and other social media channels, but it is still readily available from third-party accounts.

While an unintended hoopla, the stuff-up has had a desired effect, which is that people are now talking about Megalopolis, which will be released in Australia on September 26 through local distributor Madman.

Coppola’s movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and has since played at both the Sydney Film Festival and the Melbourne International Festival.

The wildly ambitious movie was self-funded by Coppola who sold part of his lucrative wine business to finance the $US120 million project. He had been working on it in some capacity for more than four decades.

He first had the idea for it during the 1976 production of Apocalypse Now and had previously been announced as part of Coppola’s production slate in 1990.

Coppola struggled to sign a big studio to market and distribute the film with reports that Megalopolis’s challenging commercial prospects scaring off potential deals. One attendee of a private screening for studio bosses in March called it “bats**t crazy”.

Lionsgate came on board weeks after its Cannes debut.

The movie stars Adam Driver as an architect with the ability to control time who is trying to rebuild a Rome-like rotting metropolis into a city of the future.

In the trailer, his character, Cesar Catilina, can be heard making grandiose statements such as “Don’t let the now destroy the forever” and “We’re in need of a great debate about the future”.

It also stars Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Schwartzman, Talia Shire, Shia LaBeouf, Laurence Fishburne and Giancarlo Esposito.