Beyond ‘Megaflopolis’: Winning and losing at the box office is all about the zeitgeist

The fall box office season is an odd stew, a real gumbo of opportunistically timed horror movies, Hollywood blockbusters and artsy festival darlings hoping to get mainstream attention and Oscar buzz as “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” prepare to take over cinemas ahead of Thanksgiving.

Then there’s “Megalopolis,” which defies categorization, for better or worse.

The $120-million self-financed passion project from Francis Ford Coppola bombed, as expected, with $4 million in domestic ticket sales and earning a brutal “D+” rating from audience polling firm CinemaScore. Professional critics were wildly split on it. Moviegoers were baffled by it. It was never going to be a big commercial success.

And yet, shouldn’t we be kind of happy that it exists?

Coppola, maker of “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now” and “The Conversation,” put his own millions on the line to make it happen, even selling off a portion of his wine empire to raise the money. He covered the production budget, plus marketing and distribution costs. Lionsgate took the reputational gamble to release it in the U.S. for a fee and no financial risk.

Disasters like this used to bankrupt studios. With “Megalopolis,” it’s hard to see who’s hurt by the failure, other than Coppola’s estate. Oh, and let’s not forget the marketing consultant who used artificial intelligence to generate fake quotes from real critics that ended up being used in a trailer. (Lionsgate pulled the video and apologized for it.)

Lionsgate film boss Adam Fogelson said in an emailed statement that the company was proud to release the movie, adding that, “like all true art, it will be viewed and judged by movie audiences over time.” If “Megalopolis” turns out to be remembered as a curiosity or an extremely expensive museum piece — truly art for art’s sake — that’s fine. If future audiences revere it as a misunderstood gem, all the better.

But it just was never going to hit the zeitgeist, and that’s what makes or breaks movies in 2024. Meanwhile, DreamWorks Animation’s “The Wild Robot,” an acclaimed family film based on an illustrated children’s book, topped expectations with $35 million in ticket sales from the U.S. and Canada, a solid start for a non-sequel in a hopeful sign of the health of the animation business.

Overall domestic revenue numbers in 2024 are still down about 11% from last year and significantly worse compared to pre-pandemic levels.

As the box office has slowly recovered, it’s become increasingly clear that what determines a movie’s success or failure isn’t some microtrend in audience preferences, as fun as it is to try to identify those. It’s about whether the films in question tap into a current mood in the culture. That’s what the game is all about now, and it’s what makes the business so difficult to predict.

After all, what determines the zeitgeist? Is it originality? Not necessarily. Is it animation or family appeal? No. Is it critics’ reviews? Definitely not, though they don’t hurt. It’s an intangible attribute. Is it marketing? Sure, a good campaign can amplify something that already has the juice, but it can’t create it on its own. “Longlegs” had it. So did “Inside Out 2” and “It Ends With Us.” Good luck trying to mine any universal takeaways from such an eclectic group of hits.

The next film to try to capture the moment comes this weekend, with Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie à Deux” arriving in theaters. The Warner Bros. sequel comes five years after the original, which definitely created a cultural wave. The first “Joker” opened with $96 million domestically and ended up grossing $1 billion worldwide. It was also nominated for best picture at the Oscars and won for actor and original score.

Analysts aren’t expecting the follow-up, an ambitious quasi-musical with Lady Gaga starring alongside Joaquin Phoenix, to reach those heights. Most prognosticators are projecting an opening of $50 million to $60 million in North America based on the most recent audience tracking surveys, which would be lower than earlier estimates.

The previous “Joker” tapped into a certain national vibe. It was also, in a dark and semi-grounded way, a fresh take on the supervillain origin story trope. But this is a grim franchise, and it’s unclear whether today’s audiences are in the mood, given the grimness Americans are inundated with on an everyday basis.

And mood, it seems, counts for a lot.

Stuff we wrote

Sony Pictures Chief Executive Tony Vinciquerra to step down, succeeded by Ravi Ahuja. Vinciquerra is credited with quietly turning around the Culver City studio and pursuing a profitable “arms dealer” strategy at a time when competitors have struggled with billion-dollar streaming losses.

Judge denies request to free Hannah Gutierrez, armorer in fatal ‘Rust’ movie. The New Mexico judge reviewed Gutierrez’s case after dismissing charges against actor-producer Alec Baldwin in July. Gutierrez has served nearly seven months for her involuntary manslaughter conviction.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoes AI safety bill opposed by Silicon Valley. Newsom rejected Senate Bill 1047, which would have placed certain requirements on tech companies including ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Facebook parent company Meta.

We went to a gala for AI-produced movies. Here’s what we saw. A behind the scenes look at a film gala held in San Francisco that screened movies made with artificial intelligence.

Disney+ launches password sharing crackdown. What you need to know. The Walt Disney Co.’s flagship streaming service is letting people share passwords outside their households. But as with Netflix, they’ll have to pay.

New in the news:

Brian Williams to cover election night for Amazon
Newsmax settles Smartmatic defamation lawsuit
Hoda Kotb is leaving NBC’s ‘Today’ early next year
Jeff Glor and three correspondents exit CBS News

Hollywood’s season of layoffs:

Activision Blizzard laying off hundreds in SoCal
Disney sheds 300 corporate staffers
Paramount starts second phase of its planned cuts

Number of the week

$1

The deal that long seemed inevitable is finally happening.

Satellite TV provider DirecTV on Monday said it had signed a pact to buy its longtime rival Dish Network. El Segundo-based DirecTV agreed to pay a nominal $1 (not a typo) for Dish’s pay-TV business and streaming service Sling TV, while also assuming billions of Dish’s debt.

The deal, if approved by regulators, would allow DirecTV to add Dish’s more than 8 million homes to its current subscriber base of roughly 10 million.

Under the arrangement, Dish’s parent company, Englewood, Colo.-based EchoStar, will get a $2.5 billion loan to help restructure its debt load ahead of a looming payment. Private equity firm TPG will take full control of DirecTV, buying out AT&T’s 70% stake in payments totaling $7.6 billion through 2029.

With this deal, both AT&T and Charlie Ergen, the billionaire founder of EchoStar, have exited the pay-TV business, a notable milestone.

The combination of Dish and DirecTV was a long time coming. Regulators blocked an earlier attempted merger of the two companies when they proposed it in 2002.

As my colleague Meg James wrote, the landscape has changed dramatically since then. Netflix, Amazon and YouTube have soaked up much of the viewers’ time, and both Dish and DirecTV have been bleeding customers, as have the cable companies. The two firms have lost more than 60% of their customer base since 2016.

Film shoots

On-location filming held steady week-to-week and rose 18% year-over-year (though feature shoot days were still down), according to FilmLA.

Finally ...

I haven’t yet read the book from Geezer Butler, the bassist from Black Sabbath. But his interview with Marc Maron was super entertaining.