Despite losing money in cinemas on Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola is said to be insistent that his oddball epic be seen on the big screen rather than streaming or disc.
Veteran filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola famously gambled a considerable amount of his personal fortune on his 2024 epic, Megalopolis. But given that his sprawling, $120m saga is said to have lost tens of millions for the director – it’s said to have made just $14m in cinemas – you might be forgiven for thinking he’d be keen to recoup his cost through other means.
Quite the opposite.
According to a piece on The Hollywood Reporter, there’s a good reason as to why you can’t purchase Megalopolis on DVD and Blu-ray, at least in the US: Coppola wants it to remain a big-screen experience.
Megalopolis was available to stream not long after its cinema release in September 2024. By that November, the movie was available to rent on such platforms as Prime Video, Apple TV+ and Google Play; by early 2025, however, Megalopolis had been pulled from all those services, at least in the US. In the UK, Coppola’s fable is available to purchase in UHD for £13.99 from Prime Video.
Read more: Megalopolis review | A steaming pile of art
It’s a similar story on disc. In the UK, such outlets as HMV and Amazon are happily selling Megalopolis on DVD, Blu-ray and its fancy 4K Ultra HD younger relative. In the US, the disc release still hasn’t emerged; there have been reports from customers that it was available to pre-purchase at one stage, but they later had those orders cancelled.
Again, the reason for its obscurity in the US is because Coppola “wants it to play in theatres, the way it was intended,” according to a THR source. Instead, the director appears to be personally taking his film around for special screenings; one such event in Boston was said to be sold out, while another is set to happen in Detroit later in May.
Adam Driver leads an all-star cast in Megalopolis, the actor playing Cesar Catalina – a brooding architect determined to rebuild a shattered city after his own design. Coppola’s piece is all retro-futuristic decadence and homebrew special effects, with similarly outlandish performances from such big names as Aubrey Plaza (here playing a TV reporter named Wow Platinum) and Jon Voight as a wealthy banker who likes to boast about his priapism.
Curiously, Voight himself seems to be on his own Cesar-esque quest to rebuild Hollywood after his own image, albeit with the aid of one Donald Trump. We’ll have to wait and see how that works out for them.
Depending on who you talk to or read, Megalopolis is either a fascinating oddity or simply an outright disaster. Whatever your opinion, it seems that Coppola’s intent on keeping his film shrouded in its own kind of mystique.
