‘Megalopolis’ trailer pulled for using fake quotes from critics

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A trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s troubled production “Megalopolis” was taken offline within hours of its posting Wednesday, after it turned out to include made-up quotes from famed movie critics.

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“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for ‘Megalopolis,’” a spokesman for the studio said in a statement. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and (production company) American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”

The upcoming sci-fi epic – a star-studded passion project that Coppola spent decades and $120 million of his own money to produce – has been making all the wrong kinds of headlines ahead of its Sept. 27 release. A Guardian report featured crew members who described a chaotic behind-the-scenes environment they blamed on Coppola’s directing approach. A video surfaced of Coppola trying to kiss extras on set – though one of the actors involved later said his behaviour was not inappropriate. Amid the controversy, the film starring Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza and Shia LaBeouf has been highly anticipated and hotly debated since its Cannes Film Festival debut this year garnered mixed reviews.

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Wednesday’s trailer tried to turn the bad press around by reminding viewers that some of Coppola’s earlier films also debuted to divided critics’ takes but are now widely regarded as masterpieces. “True genius is often misunderstood,” the narrator says in the video’s opening seconds, as a blurb attributed to the Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris flashes on the screen, calling “The Godfather” “a sloppy, self-indulgent movie.”

It’s true that Coppola’s 1972 mob epic wasn’t well-received by studio executives before it became the highest-grossing film of the year and won multiple Academy Awards. It was even panned by some critics. But Sarris never called it sloppy or self-indulgent – the quote was one of several fabricated blurbs in the trailer, which Vulture first reported Wednesday.

Likewise, the trailer falsely quoted the New Yorker‘s former film critic Pauline Kael as saying “The Godfather” was “diminished by its artsiness.”

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Variety‘s chief film critic, Owen Gleiberman, was incorrectly quoted as calling “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” “a beautiful mess.” And Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times never wrote that Coppola’s “Dracula” was “a triumph of style over substance” – though he did say that about Tim Burton’s “Batman.”

Also nonexistent: a quote said to be from Stanley Kauffmann of the New Republic, and quotes falsely attributed to “Apocalypse Now” reviews written by Vincent Canby and Rex Reed.

Despite Lionsgate’s retraction and apology, unofficial copies of the trailer remained available on YouTube on Thursday, with hundreds of thousands of views between them.

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