In a year marred with box office flops, perhaps none have been worse than Megalopolis. Early projects had Francis Ford Coppola‘s passion project woefully underperforming at the box office, and the actual numbers have been even worse than anyone could have imagined. After four full weekends in theaters and closing in on five, Megalopolis has only earned $9.5 million worldwide, which is less than 10% of its reported budget of $100 million. Even scarier, it was also reported that director Coppola financed much of the project himself, meaning the loss is largely coming out of his pockets. Movies like Argylle and Furiosa failed to reach their reported budgets, but even they had no trouble earning up to the 10% mark or $10 million worldwide, which it seems Megalopolis will fail to reach after it whimpers out of theaters.
Megalopolis is a sci-fi epic telling the story of Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), an artist/architect who wants to build New Rome into a Utopian society. However, he can’t stop clashing with the mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who will stop at nothing to see his vision destroyed. Caught in the middle of the two of them is Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), who can’t decide whether to be loyal to Cesar or her father. In addition to Driver, Esposito, and Emmanuel, Megalopolis also stars Aubrey Plaza, who is in the midst of turning heads for her performance in Agatha All Along. Laurence Fishburne, best known for his roles in The Matrix and John Wick franchises, was also tapped for a role in Megalopolis, along with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World star Jason Schwartzman.
‘Megalopolis’ Performed Worse Than These Movies
Currently sitting outside the top 140 movies of the year at the worldwide box office yet boasting one of the most expensive budgets, Megalopolis has failed to earn more than Love Lies Bleeding, the A24 drama starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian, and also falls short of The Crow, another Lionsgate flop which somehow managed to pass $15 million at the worldwide box office. Megalopolis is also more than $6 million short of Kinds of Kindness, the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed film which reunited the Award-winning director with Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe while also bringing on Jesse Plemons.
It was previously thought that Megalopolis had already grossed $10 million, but adjustments according to The Numbers have the film at $9.5 million. Megalopolis is still playing in select theaters. Stay tuned to Collider for future box office updates on the film and find tickets below for a showtime near you.
An architect wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster.
- Director
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Cast
- Adam Driver , Forest Whitaker , Nathalie Emmanuel , Jon Voight , Laurence Fishburne , Aubrey Plaza , Shia LaBeouf , Jason Schwartzman , Grace VanderWaal , Kathryn Hunter , Talia Shire , Dustin Hoffman , D. B. Sweeney , Giancarlo Esposito
- Runtime
- 138 Minutes
- Writers
- Francis Ford Coppola
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