Megalopolis is struggling to come anywhere near its $120 million production budget in its opening weekend. The science fiction epic, which was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is a long-term passion project for the filmmaker, who self-funded it in a variety of ways, including selling part of his winery. The Megalopolis The release comes more than 40 years after the film’s development in 1983 and roughly two years after principal photography began with an ensemble cast including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight and Laurence. Fishburne.
As of Saturday morning, projections reflect that The 3-day opening weekend of Megalopolis Coming in well under $5 millionwith Term Showing the movie coming in at number 6 on the domestic box office chart with $4.1 million and Variety reporting that it is expected to land at number 5 with $4.6 million. Each total is significantly less than 5% of the movie’s guaranteed budget.
What this opening weekend means for Megalopolis
The finances of the movie are complicated
Typically, a movie needs to earn between two and two-and-a-half times its budget to make a profit due to a variety of factors, including theaters keeping half of ticket sales, and publicity costs not being included in production budgets. . That would Likely set the break-even point for Megalopolis Somewhere around $300 millionWhich seems like an almost impossible figure for it to achieve, given its theatrical premiere and audience reaction, which includes a D+ CinemaScore and a 41% Rotten Tomatoes audience score at the time of writing.
However, this goal becomes a little more complicated by the fact that the budget comes from Francis Ford Coppola’s own money. Although the movie was set in the US, it. Theaters by Lionsgate, Coppola still owns Megalopolis Through his company American Zoetrope. The distribution costs will have been significantly less than the movie’s budget, so Lionsgate could still see some profit from the release depending on how much they spent on putting it in theaters and how it performs overall, though It will probably never end up in the black in and of itself.
Our take on the opening weekend of Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola’s career may suffer from the risky movie
It remains to be seen how Megalopolis Performs in the long run, however It seems inevitable that it will negatively impact the director In ways both financial and professional. This may be especially damaging because it’s the first proper Francis Ford Coppola movie, in terms of theatrical features, in more than a decade since 2011. tweakedwhich was also a box office flop, grossing $1.3 million against a $7 million budget. It may take self-funding another project for him to get another movie into theaters in the wake of this sci-fi epic, if taking such a risk is possible.
Source: term & Variety