WEEKLY RECAP #75: "Megalopolis" Marks New Lionsgate Loss
9/22/24 -- 9/28/24
Francis Ford Floppola
Those who have been subscribed to this page for some time now might remember my Yearly Recap for 2023, where one of the major running themes of the year I covered was Walt Disney Studios’ surprisingly shitty financial returns. Indeed, after none of their tentpole releases crossed a billion dollars — most of them underperformed, in fact — it was clear that Disney would need a few major hits in 2024 to bounce back. Well, between the debuts of Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine this summer, it’s safe to say that the mouse squeaks another day. Man, what a close shave: if Disney hadn’t just cranked out two of the biggest movies of all time, we very well might’ve seen some serious decay in the Disney Empire. Or, perhaps, Disney is too iconic and widespread of a name brand to sink over one, or two, or even three years of constant flops. Regardless, it seems that we’ll never get a good case study of a major Hollywood production & distribution company reaching a point of bankruptcy…
…or maybe we will. You see, a little movie with a big heart called Megalopolis just debuted in theaters, and audiences have responded by screaming in disgust and stabbing the heart repeatedly until it stops beating. After months of intrigue, controversy and catastrophic reviews being left in the wake of its various preview screenings for critics and festival-goers, Francis Ford Coppola’s star-studded dream project half a century in the making has arrived to a jaw-droppingly low $4.1 million three-day opening. On Cinemascore, the site used to gauge how the average audience member is responding to a film, Megalopolis has received a D+, a grade usually assigned to movies that are either too avant-garde for the average Joe Schmo or so genuinely awful that it appeals to almost no one. (Which of those categories does it actually fall into? Who’s to say?) Regardless of your thoughts, the bottom line is this: Megalopolis has somehow opened at the lower end of already abysmal projections, and will only do worse over the next few weeks with its nonexistent word of mouth. And this larger-than-Adam-Driver’s-sexy-ass-nose truth pill is currently being swallowed by the executives at Lionsgate, the company who boldly chose to acquire this film for distribution and pay for all of its marketing.
But why is this such a big deal? Megalopolis isn’t the first big-budget bomb of this size in the film industry — at some point, almost every production/distribution company has a loss of profit at least close to as bad as this (relative to budget), right? Well, that might sound comforting in another context, but this isn’t the first bomb for Lionsgate this year. In fact, it’s not even the second. Or third. Or fourth. Lemme use some Gen Z slang to get it into your heads: Lionsgate’s run this year needs to be studied… for being so fucking awful. In the past few months especially — from The Strangers: Chapter 1, to Borderlands, to The Crow, to The Killer’s Game, to Never Let Go, to Bagman (a movie you’ve never heard of that came out in select theaters this weekend) — Lionsgate movies have been grossing on levels that are, at best, disappointing, and, at worst, so bad that they’re rushed out of theaters as quickly as possible. It’s worth noting that these failures are partially due to lackluster marketing, and also due to pretty much all of these movies looking like shit and having terrible reviews, which, y’know, doesn’t help. And now, Lionsgate is heading into October with Megalopolis: the mother of all critically-panned, confusingly-marketed bombs.
Why are so many of these projects stinkers? Well, Lionsgate has always been a risk-taking studio, often deliberately taking in franchises and standalone films that have an edge and don’t quite fit into other studio’s clearcut mold. As I mentioned fourteen recaps ago, they are a bit of a black sheep in the industry, with their most notable hits being young-adult franchises, the John Wick movies, and the somehow-never-ending Saw franchise. Their unpredictable nature is probably what led to them acquiring Megalopolis — after all, it is a movie causing lots of discussion and does seem to challenge the average viewer’s expectations of what a film should be, and sometimes being subversive sells! Whether this acquisition was out of some twisted business strategy or a depraved “we’ve got nothing left to lose” mentality, you kind of have to respect this dumb-ass decision to knowingly invest in an obvious money-loser either way.
So, how many more high profile bombs can a studio like Lionsgate endure? It’s hard to say for sure, since 2025 could go several ways for them. On the one hand, it doesn’t seem like they’ll be starting off the year strong, with disposable action shlock-movie Flight Risk coming out in January. However, their Michael Jackson biopic — however soulless and unholy it may end up being — might just be the foolproof shot in the arm that carries them limply across the finish line to breaking even next year. No matter what the future holds, 2024 is pretty much cemented as Lionsgate’s equivalent to what 2023 was for Disney: a year they will surely be happy to forget, and potentially a point of change for the studio’s usual way of doing things.
And y’know what? I think that’s a damn shame. For what it’s worth, the madlads at Lionsgate actually do occasionally invest in riskier mid-budget movies, and any of you who’ve been paying attention to the state of the film industry know that we haven’t been getting as much of those as we used to. This isn’t to say that Lionsgate is a perfect company, and it certainly isn’t to say that they’re not to blame for their fuck-ups this year: again, pretty much everything on their 2024 slate turned out to be shit as predicted months in advance by anyone with eyeballs. As we’ve seen time and time again, studios only take away the dumbest possible lessons from their mistakes, so we may not see Lionsgate make a course-correction from wasting their refreshing willingness to take risks on non-starters, but instead watch them stick to making dry sequels of franchises that they know sell tickets.
I hate to end this wild conclusion to the Megalopolis saga on such a sour, hopeless note, but hey — that’s what you guys subscribe to me for, right? Listen, I’m just the messenger here, and if it makes you feel any better, I’m as bummed as you are. Distributing Megalopolis was truly a selfless act on behalf of Lionsgate, one that speaks to a commitment to delivering a see-it-to-believe-it movie to general American audiences no matter the cost. It’s a purely “art over commerce” decision, and how many other studios (large or small) do you see making decisions like that? It’s admirable as fuck, dammit! My hope is that, in true Lionsgate fashion, the CEOs just say “fuck it” and invest in the dumbest shit ever to go out in a blaze of glory. After all, in this industry, you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself produce Saw XII.