Two weeks after one of the great marketing foul-ups in recent memory, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis has a new trailer – now sans AI-written review quotes.
Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming self-funded epic Megalopolis has endured plenty of negative headlines on its road to release… and the final trailer for the film cleverly sought to invert all of that anti-buzz into anticipation. The plan to show dismissive review quotes of Coppola’s previous masterpieces was an ingenious idea – right up until somebody elected not to dig up real quotes and instead presumably just asked ChatGPT to do it.
The resulting trailer was released with inauthentic quotes, all attributed to well-regarded film critics, attached to it. Uproar followed, the trailer was yanked, and somebody, somewhere was, er, talked to. (Specifically, long-time Lionsgate marketing consultant Eddie Egan was very publicly dismissed.)
As well as potentially serving as a cautionary tale for letting a piece of software do your job for you, the high-profile gaffe further underlined the film’s reputation as troubled, a tag it has struggled to shed throughout its production, although its filmmakers would (and have) argued that much of this is overly-keen reporting on the part of the Hollywood trades.
It’s taken a fortnight, but Megalopolis now has a new trailer, presumably a ChatGPT-free one at that. And who knows? Maybe all of this attention will somehow help the film on its release.
It certainly has a cast to draw interest, with Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne and Dustin Hoffman all appearing, to name a few. Entertainment Film Distributors will bring Megalopolis to UK screens on 27th September, the same day as the film is released in the US. The film will also be available in IMAX.
We’ll leave you with the synopsis. The new trailer (now without AI) is below.
Here’s the film’s synopsis: MEGALOPOLIS is a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.
