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To publicize Francis Ford Coppola’s epic, the ad used alleged lines from the Times, the New Yorker, and others to recommend that critics be about him.
By Annie Aguiar
A new trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” that contained false negative quotes from film critics has been removed through the film’s distributor, Lionsgate, a corporate spokesperson said Wednesday.
The trailer, which was released in the morning, included quotes from well-known film critics of the past, including Pauline Kael of The New Yorker, Vincent Canby of The New York Times and Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun Times, analyzing past Coppola films such as “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula. “
However, as critic Bilge Ebiri first reported in Vulture, the quotes are real. The trailer has now been removed from YouTube, after racking up more than 1. 3 million views in the single day it was uploaded.
“Lionsgate will promptly remove our ‘Megalopolis’ trailer,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “We sincerely thank the interested reviewers, as well as Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope, for this unforgivable error in our review process. We were wrong. We’re sorry. »
“Megalopolis,” which was self-financed through Coppola and is scheduled for release on Sept. 27, failed to find a customer until Lionsgate stepped in. The fantasy epic garnered a decidedly mixed reception at the Cannes Film Festival. On Rotten Tomatoes, it only has a score of 53% among critics. The trailer seemed like an effort to show that critics aren’t right when it comes to Coppola’s work.
The spot quoted Kael as saying that “The Godfather” “diminished in his artistic side,” when in fact she spoke enthusiastically about it. Although Canthrough, who worked as a film critic at The New York Times from 1969 to 1993, wasn’t a fan of “Apocalypse Now,” calling it “intellectual confusion,” he didn’t use the word “hollow in the heart” as the trailer indicates.
The trailer also included quotes from Andrew Sarris in The Village Voice, Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic, Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly, and Rex Reed in The New York Observer and The New York Daily News, according to the Vulture report.
John Simon of National Review is also included in the ad, and a member of the magazine posted in X that staff were reviewing the records but thought they were fake.
It is unclear how the fake quotes were created. Some on social media, speculating about the use of synthetic intelligence tools, began sending activations to ChatGPT for similar results.
Lionsgate says whether ChatGPT or other AI-powered equipment was used for the trailer.
The pulled trailer was not the first controversy surrounding the film. A May article in The Guardian cited anonymous sources accusing Coppola of seeking to kiss extras on the set of a nightclub scene. A co-executive producer, Darren Demeter, said he was not aware of any harassment court cases brought on the production, and Coppola later told the Times: “I’m not susceptible,” Coppola said. “I’m too shy. “
Annie Aguiar is an arts and culture journalist and member of the Class of 2024-25 Times Fellowship, a program for early-career journalists. Learn more about Annie Aguiar
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