‘Megalopolis’: Will Distributors Replicate One Of The Movie’s Most Talked About Moments? “We’ll Try As Many Times As We Can,” Says France’s Le Pacte
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details about the narrative of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.
EXCLUSIVE: One of the many talking points to emerge from this week’s Cannes Film Festival screening of Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Megalopolis is whether distributors will be able to replicate the film’s ‘fourth wall moment’.
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As most reviews for the film detail, at a certain point in Wednesday’s world premiere a performer walked onto the stage in front of the cinema screen and engaged with Adam Driver’s character in a device known as “breaking the fourth wall.”
Is it plausible that distributors would replicate such a moment in every screening? Unlikely. But at least one will give it a good shot.
Jean Labadie, who runs the film’s French distributor Le Pacte, told Deadline: “We certainly will do a lot of such performances. With four screenings a day in many theaters it will not be easy to do it for each screening. It will be organized, but we cannot predict how many times we’ll be able to do it. We will work on that with every exhibitor in France to try to do it as many times as we can.”
As we first revealed earlier this year, Coppola’s plan all along has been to have an IMAX component, something confirmed in Cannes by the company’s CEO Richard Gelfond.
The use of an actor/performer/cinema worker within a screening would likely be easier and more striking in an IMAX venue due to the extra space to work with.
“We have only 22 IMAX theaters in France”, admits Labadie, “but we are eager to try to show Francis Ford Coppola’s creation the way he invented it. How we go about that is not so easy to say.”
Any move to include a performer during a screening would need the buy-in of the exhibitor. Deadline understands that other preview screenings of the movie have included the conceit.
We reached out to the film’s four other European distributors regarding the prospect but have yet to hear back.
IMAX said this week that it is looking to host a live event with Coppola before a screening of the movie but plans will be firmed up once there is clarity on the U.S. distributor. That remains a mystery as of today.
Critics in Cannes were wildly divided on Megalopolis. Some heralded it as visionary and a “mad masterpiece” while others used far less complimentary language.
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The $120M epic stars Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, D.B. Sweeney, and Dustin Hoffman.
The synopsis reads: “Megalopolis is a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.”
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