Cinemas beg you to put your phone away — Coppola wants it out for Megalopolis
Cinemas spend half the trailers begging you to put your phone away. Francis Ford Coppola is bringing Megalopolis back and asking you to get it out. Two years after it vanished from cinemas,
Cinemas spend half the trailers begging you to put your phone away. Francis Ford Coppola is bringing Megalopolis back and asking you to get it out.
Two years after it vanished from cinemas, Megalopolis is coming back with new house rules. Reading International will screen Francis Ford Coppola's film simultaneously across its American cinemas, from New York to Hawaii, on 24 October, Deadline revealed on 9 October. Afterwards comes a livestreamed Q&A, moderated by his son Roman, the film's second unit director. You ask your question by text: before the film, after it and, crucially, during it. Coppola answers the best ones live.
"Megalopolis is back in its rightful place, theaters, and the interest in seeing it as was intended is growing. I am excited to take part in an interactive Q&A across multiple theaters simultaneously."
— Francis Ford Coppola, to Deadline
The rightful place had a rough first stay. Coppola sold part of his wine business to fund the film himself, and the budget landed at around $120 million. Lionsgate released it in September 2024, it opened to roughly $4 million from 1,854 American cinemas and finished below $15 million worldwide. One of the most expensive independent films ever made became one of the most expensive punchlines.
The ritual, piece by piece
Coppola isn't treating this as a rerelease. He's treating it as a ritual with a running order. Each 24 October screening comes with:
- A letter: every audience member gets a hard copy of Coppola's director's statement, to read before the lights go down.
- The Live Element: the Cannes stunt, last seen at select 2024 screenings, where a real person steps up to a microphone in front of the screen and asks Adam Driver's Cesar Catalina a question. Cesar answers from the film.
- The phones: questions texted mid-film, picked over by the director himself.
- New Year's Day: the film will return periodically, including screenings every 1 January, which Coppola sees as a symbol of coming together to discuss how society might improve.
What it still won't do is go anywhere near an American streaming service or a US DVD. Coppola decided that when he wrote the cheques. If you want to see Megalopolis in the States, you have to turn up, take a letter and, apparently, text the man who made The Godfather.
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Reddit has seen this film before
The r/movies thread spotted the precedent straight away: "So, what Tommy Wiseau has been doing with The Room for the last couple of decades." Fair enough. Wiseau's 2003 disaster became a midnight-screening fixture because audiences talked back, threw plastic spoons and quizzed the director in person. The difference is that Wiseau waited years for the ironic love to arrive. Coppola is printing the order of service himself.
A $120 million flop with its own annual holiday, a letter on every seat and a licence to text: Coppola has built a cult and skipped the waiting period.
The top comment went straight for the etiquette problem: "Getting yelled at for texting during a movie and telling my fellow audience member that Francis Ford Coppola told me to." The reply was crueller: "bold to assume there's gonna be someone else to yell at you."
There's also a warning from someone who has sat through this before. One user who went to a post-screening Coppola Q&A last year described a lecture rather than a conversation: people trickled out after 20 minutes, and by 40 he and his mate had gone too, while Coppola went off on tangents explaining what they had just watched.
This time, at least, you can text your question from the car park.
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