It might sound funny about a box office mega flop like Megalopolis, but Coppola’s now in a good spot because he alone controls the film’s fate; when making the film’s original distribution deals, he withheld television and VOD rights. “Since I took the risk, I want to own that, which I do, so I’m not interested in selling that to someone else. I want to be able to control it,” he said of a potential streaming deal last year to Deadline. Because “streaming moves in the direction of a business model where they’re trying to get subscriptions,” Coppola feels it’s inherently “anti-art,” as he told DiscussingFilm. But to him, whether you stream the film or pop in a Blu-ray is all the same. “Better that people go to a big theatre, not a multiplex, but a real theatre and see a movie with 300 people,” he said to DiscussingFilm. “I still remember going to see The Bridge On River Kwai or Lawrence Of Arabia. I’ll never forget it. And you can’t have that experience just in your living room.”
Maybe Coppola would’ve liked his labor of love to be a smash success, but he feels it’s finding its audience. “After the election, people are selling out screenings of Megalopolis—the way it was intended to be seen,” he explains to GQ. “Being that it was so prophetic or prescient to say America is like Rome—it’s going to maybe lose its republic—now people are rushing to see it in theaters. We sold out three screenings in Boston recently, in Detroit, and people are really lining up. It’s just like what happened with Apocalypse Now. Apocalypse Now was a big flop, it got terrible reviews, everyone said it was the worst movie ever made. And yet people never stopped going to see it. The same thing is now happening with Megalopolis.“
Comparing Megalopolis to his own previously misunderstood masterworks has been part of the marketing strategy from the beginning. Adding an element of scarcity is a smart strategy for Megalopolis‘ long-term success. The film’s strangeness has already taken on a mythic quality; it’s easy to imagine people lining up when the film is someday re-released to get a chance to see Coppola’s lost epic. And when it is eventually given a home release—perhaps a limited edition Criterion special—film buffs will probably scramble to get a copy. Trust, that’s been part of the plan all along: “Of course there’ll be a life for that. But that’s where the long-term money is for movies,” he acknowledged to Deadline in 2024. “It’s the 40 years of people buying the same movie over and over again, which happened to Apocalypse Now.”
But for Coppola the money is not the top factor. “I have a lot of lifelong dreams. Megalopolis was one. I have others,” he says to GQ. “Basically, I have a film I’m obsessed with [now]. But I take exception with this phrase that’s been coined, the “passion project.” All motion picture directing you do out of passion. Sure, you do some things—you gotta make a living. But when you make the film, you are passionate about it. All directors are.”
