Francis Ford Coppola Talks ‘Megalopolis’ Cult Status & Trump’s Tariffs

Although Megalopolis was a critical and commercial flop upon its initial release, Francis Ford Coppola is confident the film will find its cult audience.

The 5x Oscar winner recently explained that the movie has yet to come to streaming or physical media “because the film is still being shown in theaters” and has become extra relevant after Donald Trump was elected president in November.

“I don’t want anyone to own it,” Coppola told GQ. “After the election, people are selling out screenings of Megalopolis—the way it was intended to be seen. Being that it was so prophetic or prescient to say America is like Rome—it’s going to maybe lose its republic—now people are rushing to see it in theaters. We sold out three screenings in Boston recently, in Detroit, and people are really lining up. It’s just like what happened with Apocalypse Now. Apocalypse Now was a big flop, it got terrible reviews, everyone said it was the worst movie ever made. And yet people never stopped going to see it. The same thing is now happening with Megalopolis.”

Despite Coppola’s $120 million investment in the epic blockbuster, Megalopolis was torn apart by critics, earning $14.3M worldwide. First conceived by Coppola in 1983, the film deconstructs Roman history in a modern alternate New York City.

In the same interview, Coppola denounced the Trump administration’s recent announcement that they’re implementing 100% tariffs on foreign-made films, effectively “slamming the door closed” on opportunities for the film and television industry.

“No one I know thinks that this tariff philosophy— All it does is create uncertainty,” said Coppola. “People don’t understand that the economy in the previous administration? There was world inflation, there wasn’t [just] inflation in America. The entire world was going through a serious inflationary trend. But the country that did the best with it—and which other countries were jealous of—was the United States. So, the United States really banked a lot of money previous to this new administration, and there’s a lot of money in the country, and these tariffs are like slamming the door closed on what was a very prosperous situation.”

Last weekend, Trump called runaway productions a “national security threat” and announced plans to put 100% tariffs on imports of movies produced in “foreign lands.”