A new Megalopolis trailer dropped earlier today—and it played into the mixed early buzz surrounding Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project , highlighting tepid reviews of his past films (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather) that are now considered masterpieces. But what seemed like a clever gimmick a few hours ago now feels like a stunt gone very wrong. Studio Lionsgate has just admitted—after Vulture and other online sleuths began poking deeper into those reviews—that the quotes were not real.
In a statement to Variety , Lionsgate took full responsibility. “Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis ,” the statement provided to the trade read. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process.
We screwed up. We are sorry.” While the trailer has since been removed, it contained quotes from legendary critics including Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Roger Ebert—writers whose opinions helped shaped the public’s moviegoing choices for decades, and whose reviews are very easily accessible in both print and online.
Gizmodo’s Rhett Jones theorized that someone could have used a chatbot program to come up with the false quotes; here’s what chatGPT came up with when he asked it about Ebert’s review of Coppola’s 1992 horror romance Bram Stoker’s Dracula , one of the examples cited in the Megalopolis trailer: (Any actual use of a chatbot.