2024’s other movie dud limps to first milestone as it loses $110,000,000 at box office-Tori Brazier-Entertainment – Metro

It’s been a poor autumn for movies so far, with Megalopolis flopping (Picture: Lionsgate Movies)

One of the year’s most financially unsuccessful movies has finally crossed its first threshold at the global box office – but it spells disaster with a loss of around $110,000,000 (£84,029,000).

Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis finally made it into cinemas in September after a bumpy ride to find distributors for the divisive flick.

Premiering at Cannes Film Festival in May, Megalopolis baffled critics, with many eviscerating it – including Metro’s critic, who described it as ‘the worst film I’ve ever seen’.

A labour of love from legendary filmmaker Coppola that had been in the works since the 1980s, it was actually self-funded by the writer-director to the tune of a reported $120million (£91.7m).

He sold his well-regarded winery to free up the capital required, telling Metro and other reporters at the film’s Cannes press conference that ‘the money doesn’t matter’.

‘I have no problems with the financial,’ he declared. ‘My children, without exception, have wonderful careers without a fortune. We are fine. It doesn’t matter.’

Francis Ford Coppola’s ambitious film was self-funded and over 40 years in the making (Picture: Lionsgate)

And that’s probably for the best when Megalopolis has just made it over the $10m mark at the box office internationally, weeks after release.

Variety revealed that the opening weekend predictions were estimated between a disappointing $5-$7m (£3.82m – £5.35m) anyway.

As it ended up, Megalopolis couldn’t even muster that, opening with a whimper domestically on $4,007,797 (£3,061,155).

Two and a half weeks later, the controversial film has scraped together a worldwide gross of $10,803,623 (£8,252,887), made up of $7.3m (£5.57m) domestic gross and more than $3.4m (£2.59m) internationally.

That leaves it $110m (£84m) short of its production budget – without even including any marketing costs distributor Lionsgate would have sunk into it.

It has so far made only just over $10m at the international box office (Picture: Lionsgate)

It also opened with a brutal D+ CinemaScore, making it marginally better received than its fellow flop Joker: Folie à Deux, which is also facing a loss of tens of millions.

Fans had seemed initially excited by Coppola’s bold vision when he debuted the trailer earlier this year, with some anticipating ‘the greatest movie ever made’.

The filmmaker even appeared to have fun in the final trailer of Megalopolis by utilising its more brutal reviews – before they were revealed to have been misattributed and produced by AI in an embarrassing faux pas.

However, the buzz hasn’t translated into box office, and the film now sits at a lower score among fans than critics on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with 46% on the Tomatometer versus just 35% on audience rating the Popcornmeter at the time of publication.

Coppola launched the film at Cannes alongside his cast (pictured with Aubrey Plaza and Nathalie Emmanuel) (Picture: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

‘One word… Megaflopolis,’ quipped fan Step G on the site, while Walt branded it ‘a total dud’ and ‘probably the worst mainstream film in decades’.

‘Avoid like the plague,’ they added, while Michael K admitted: ‘I’ve only ever left the theatre within an hour one other time.’

‘A complete waste of time and money,’ added Jim J among choruses of it being ‘impossibly bad’.

However, some disagreed, with David calling it ‘a true work of art’ and others describing it as ‘a pleasure’.

Megalopolis couldn’t tempt fans to the cinema in big numbers (Picture: Lionsgate)

Breaking Bad star Giancarlo Esposito plays conservative mayor of New Rome – Megalopolis’s version of New York – Franklyn Cicero in the movie.

He is the rival to genius architect Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), who seeks to propel the struggling city into a utopian, idealistic future with his building plans.

The movie also stars Jon Voight, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Dustin Hoffman and Game of Thrones actress Nathalie Emmanuel.

Megalopolis is in cinemas now.

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