Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola’s sci-fi passion project Megalopolis continues to be one of Hollywood’s biggest train wrecks. The latest derailment was a trailer that had to be pulled for fabricating quotes. It’s now being reported that, surprise, the trailer quotes were generated by AI.
Where to begin with Megalopolis? The short version is that it’s a heady but big-budget art house movie with an eclectic but all-star cast led by Adam Driver about an architect facing an existential crisis in a futuristic city. Coppola has apparently wanted to make it for decades, and even sold part of his winery to finance the $120 million budget. Its divided critics with a roughly 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and Coppola has been accused of inappropriate behavior on the set, including a video showing him kissing female extras.
Then this week a trailer came out that included famous movie critics panning various past films of Coppola’s like Bram Stoker’s Dracula. “Diminished by its artsiness,” read a quote attributed to Pauline Kael about The Godfather for The New Yorker that flashes onscreen, trying to make the point that any recent negative press around Megalopolis is similarly mistaken. The only problem was that Kael never wrote it. Variety now reports that generative AI did.
“Sources tell Variety it was not Lionsgate or Egan’s intention to fabricate quotes, but was an error in properly vetting and fact-checking the phrases provided by the consultant,” reads the report. “It appears that AI was used to generate the false quotes from the critics.”
Lionsgate didn’t comment on the allegation, but it has parted ways with Eddie Egan, the marketing consultant now being blamed for the embarrassing controversy. “Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis,” the company which is distributing the movie announced earlier this week. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”
Megalopolis comes to theaters in wide-release on September 27 and I am morbidly curious.