new Megalopolis The trailer was released today, adding to the early mixed buzz surrounding Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project and highlighting the lukewarm reviews of his past work. (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather) They’re now considered masterpieces, but what seemed like a clever gimmick only hours ago now feels like a stunt gone awry, and the studio, Lionsgate, only just admitted that the quotes weren’t real after Vulture and other online sleuths began digging into the reviews.
In a statement to Variety, Lionsgate took full responsibility: “Lionsgate will be immediately recalling our trailers. Megalopolis“We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved, Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for the unforgivable errors in our review process. We failed. We are sorry,” the statement provided to the industry read.
The trailer has since been removed, but it featured quotes from writers whose opinions have helped shape people’s movie-going choices for decades, including Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris and Roger Ebert, whose reviews are readily available in print and online.
Gizmodo’s Rhett Jones speculated that someone may have used a chatbot program to create the fake quotes: When he asked chatGPT about Ebert’s review of Coppola’s 1992 horror romance, he got the following response: Bram Stoker’s DraculaOne of the examples cited in Megalopolis trailer:
(It is unconfirmed whether a chatbot was actually used to generate the quotes used in the trailer; this was simply an experiment.)
In the trailer, Ebert mentions: Dracula It has been described as “style over substance,” a phrase that doesn’t appear in his actual reviews (though he do The piece has been described as “fanatical overkill,” but it appears almost verbatim in a sample chat GPT prompt. (io9 reached out to Lionsgate for comment on Vulture’s story about the fabricated quote earlier today, but did not hear back before Variety and other trade publications published the studio’s “we screwed up” statement.)
Although Cale, Sarris and Ebert are now deceased, one critic Megalopolis Owen Glieberman, formerly of Entertainment Weekly and now of Variety, saw the trailer and took notice and gave his reaction.
He pointed out in the current media that the idea behind the trailer itself – that Coppola’s magnum opus was initially misunderstood – was shaky to begin with. The Godfather” he told Variety. “And Apocalypse Now It has generated mixed reviews, but also received a lot of critical support. Bram Stoker’s Dracula “A beautiful mess, I wish I could have said that! It now sounds like a kind thing to say about that movie.”
Megalopolis It is scheduled to be released in theaters and IMAX on September 27. The film stars Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney, Dustin Hoffman and Aubrey Plaza.
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