Though Megalopolis was a crucial and industrial flop upon its preliminary launch, Francis Ford Coppola is assured the movie will discover its cult viewers.
The 5x Oscar winner just lately defined that the film has but to come back to streaming or bodily media “as a result of the movie remains to be being proven in theaters” and has grow to be further related after Donald Trump was elected president in November.
“I don’t need anybody to personal it,” Coppola informed GQ. “After the election, persons are promoting out screenings of Megalopolis—the best way it was meant to be seen. Being that it was so prophetic or prescient to say America is like Rome—it’s going to perhaps lose its republic—now persons are dashing to see it in theaters. We offered out three screenings in Boston just lately, in Detroit, and persons are actually lining up. It’s similar to what occurred with Apocalypse Now. Apocalypse Now was an enormous flop, it obtained horrible evaluations, everybody mentioned it was the worst film ever made. And but individuals by no means stopped going to see it. The identical factor is now taking place with Megalopolis.”
Regardless of Coppola’s $120 million funding within the epic blockbuster, Megalopolis was torn aside by critics, incomes $14.3M worldwide. First conceived by Coppola in 1983, the movie deconstructs Roman historical past in a contemporary alternate New York Metropolis.
In the identical interview, Coppola denounced the Trump administration’s latest announcement that they’re implementing 100% tariffs on foreign-made movies, successfully “slamming the door closed” on alternatives for the movie and tv business.
Francis Ford Coppola on the AFI Life Achievement Award Tribute held at The Dolby Theatre on April 26, 2025 in Los Angeles, California
Michael Buckner/Deadline
“Nobody I do know thinks that this tariff philosophy— All it does is create uncertainty,” mentioned Coppola. “Folks don’t perceive that the financial system within the earlier administration? There was world inflation, there wasn’t [just] inflation in America. Your entire world was going via a severe inflationary pattern. However the nation that did one of the best with it—and which different nations have been jealous of—was america. So, america actually banked some huge cash earlier to this new administration, and there’s some huge cash within the nation, and these tariffs are like slamming the door closed on what was a really affluent scenario.”
Final weekend, Trump referred to as runaway productions a “nationwide safety menace” and introduced plans to place 100% tariffs on imports of films produced in “overseas lands.”
