Francis Ford Coppola for the first time responded to the “Megalopolis” trailer snafu, calling the use of fake film critic quotes a “mistake” and an “accident.”
The auteur told Entertainment Tonight at the film’s screening in Toronto that he’s “not sure what happened” with the first trailer but did take a little responsibility.
“I’m the one who said there were bad reviews, but I don’t know,” Coppola said. “It was a mistake, an accident, I’m not sure what happened.”
The marketing ploy for the initial trailer used quotes from very real (and iconic) film critics citing Coppola’s past classic features like “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now,” but it was discovered just about all the quotes turned out to be fake, with some critics writing positively about the films in question.
The since-removed trailer positioned “Megalopolis” as another misunderstood Coppola feature that will also be considered a critical success in the decades to come. But when it was found the quotes were made up, potentially created by an AI chatbot, distributor Lionsgate pulled the trailer, apologized, and cut ties with the marketing consultant responsible.
“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for ‘Megalopolis,’” a spokesman for the company said in a statement provided to IndieWire. “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.”
As for what fans can expect from “Megalopolis,” which debuted at Cannes and later screened at TIFF, the director told ET, “It’s not like anything you’ve seen.”
“I wanted to find a film that was uniquely mine,” he said. “When I made John Grisham’s ‘The Rainmaker,’ I took off and I quit. I just said, ‘I want to study and learn what my kind of film is, whatever that might be.’ And after 14 years of that type of experimentation, I then came out and made a film that was my kind of film.”
Coppola previously told Empire that “Megalopolis” is a feature that “leaps into the unknown, unafraid.”
“As we know, the art we revere — Bizet’s ‘Carmen,’ artists like Picasso, Monet, and Matisse — is art that in its time was considered too risky or a failure,” Coppola said. “‘Apocalypse Now’ is a perfect example. When it came out, people said, ‘What the hell is this?’ But they never stopped going to see it. With ‘Megalopolis’ you can’t put a label on it. And that’s great. That’s the kind of film I like.”
“Megalopolis” stars Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman, Shia LaBeouf, and Laurence Fishburne. The film will be released September 27 in theaters.
