Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited movie, “Megalopolis,” finally opens next month. The latest trailer, however, that was released by Lionsgate Wednesday, entered controversial ground due to an unexpected blunder in marketing.
The trailer begins with what appears to be quotes from reviews of Coppola’s classic works like “Apocalypse Now” and “The Godfather.” This is likely an attempt at getting ahead of the very mixed reactions “Megalopolis” got from critics at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. New York Magazine critic Bilge Ebiri responded just as fast, however, pointing out that all of the quotes were fabricated.
The studio axed the trailer almost immediately after backlash. “Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for ‘Megalopolis,'” a spokesperson told TheWrap. “We offer our sincerest apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable mistake in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”.
Canadian cinematographer Devan Scott theorized that the mistake could have been made by a marketing intern who might have used an AI chatbot to come up with “negative contemporaneous reviews of ‘The Godfather.'” The fake quotes could have been due to nobody actually checking if they were real.
The incident is particularly embarrassing because, as Ebiri pointed out, Lionsgate could have simply fabricated generic quotes attributed to obscure sources, with very little risk of scrutiny. Instead, they decided to cite such legendary critics as Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris—whose work is pretty well known and easily fact-checked—thus making the whole deceit feel somehow needless and bizarre.
For instance, Pauline Kael actually acclaimed “The Godfather,” opening her review with, “If ever there was a great example of how the best popular movies come out of a merger of commerce and art, ‘The Godfather’ is it.” There is no appearance of the phrase accredited to her in the trailer —”diminished by its artsiness”— in any of her reviews of “The Godfather” films. Also, Andrew Sarris’ alleged quote, “a sloppy, self-indulgent movie,” could not be found in his original review. Actually, all the quotes-even the ones vaguely corresponding to the spirit of their respective critics, like Rex Reed’s contempt for “Apocalypse Now”-were fabricated from thin air.
This isn’t the first time that studios have manipulated critic quotes for advertising purposes. In the early 2000s, Sony famously created a movie critic named David Manning who, it claimed, worked for The Ridgefield Press, a small newspaper in Connecticut. The scandal ended with an out-of-court settlement, where Sony agreed to repay moviegoers who had viewed the Manning-endorsed movies, which included “A Knight’s Tale,” “The Animal,” and “Hollow Man.” Then, around the same time, Sony was also found to have hired employees to dress up as ordinary moviegoers in a TV commercial for the film “The Patriot.”
The newest mistake of Lionsgate perhaps ought to serve as a lesson for studios on how marketing strategies may have gone wrong when promotion wins over truth.
“Megalopolis” hits theaters Sept. 27.
