cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/10893967
While U.S. distributors continue to complain about its low commercial prospects, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” has been picked up by Le Pacte in France. French newspaper Le Point confirms the film has also set a late September release in France.
Le Pacte is the same distributor as last year’s “Anatomy of a Fall.” No word yet on how much they paid to nab the rights to “Megalopolis,” but I can’t imagine it being that high given that Le Pacte isn’t necesarilly a studio known to dish out an inordinate amount of money for a film.
The early word we’ve gotten thus far is that Coppola’s self-funded $120 million epic is a perplexing film. It’s been described as “batsh*t crazy.” “baffling,” “downright confounding,” “undefinable,” “fit for a museum” and the “work of a madman.”
Last month’s, THR takedown of “Megalopolis,” a nasty piece of writing, surely didn’t help anything. What the report basically stated was that “Megalopolis” studio execs believed the film to be “too experimental” and “not commercial enough” to acquire.
It could also be that they are risk-adverse, hence all the franchises, sequels and remakes.
I did wonder if he was asking a lot for the rights to cover his investment but the article says this:
The American distribution rights will be more but it might not be as high as I suspected and he may be asking for a higher cut of the take. Which they also might not like - after all, this is an industry that used creative accounting to fuck over the writer of Forrest Gump so badly he refused to option the sequel.
However, at this point you have to wonder if a director’s self-funded project that he wrote and directed himself without any oversight might be pretentious and dull. All that said, you couldn’t pay for all thr publicity this has got and I can’t see them not breaking even.