Star of $105,000,000 flop didn’t realise film would be so ‘wacky’
He didn't always see eye-to-eye with the director.
A star of one of 2024’s biggest box office flops has confessed that he didn’t think the film he starred in would wind up being so ‘wacky’.
Megalopolis, directed by legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, made just $14.3million (£11m) from a budget of more than $120m (£90m).
A labour of love for the Godfather director, Megalopolis had been in development for nearly 45 years by the time it hit screens, with Francis, 86, mostly financing the film himself.
Drawing parallels between modern day USA and the demise of the Roman Republic, Megalopolis followed an architect clashing with a parallel New York’s political elite.
Despite starring the likes of Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito, and Nathalie Emmanuel, Megalopolis wound up a major commercial failure.
Critics were polarised while audiences were left dumbfounded – and one of the movie’s stars says he had a similar experience when he sat down to watch it.
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Previous Page Next PageShia LaBeouf, 38, played Clodio Pulcher in the epic sci-fi movie – the envious younger cousin of Adam Driver’s main character Cesar Catilina.
In a frank interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Shia said of Francis: ‘He really believes he’s this theater director guy. He’s not. But he believes he is.
‘He thinks he’s the actor’s guy – but he’s not. That’s not to say he’s not incredible, it’s just not what his incredible is. It’s not helpful to the actor to get overt notes.’
Megalopolis lost a huge amount of money at the global box office (Picture: Lionsgate/AP) Shia played Clodio, the younger cousin of Adam Driver’s character Cesar (Picture: Lionsgate via AP)Shia continued: ‘Maybe it’s just the movie that I worked on him with, but it felt like we had to mine his mind to figure out what we were even talking about.
‘[There ended up being] a lot of questions on my end, which required answers, which frustrated our relationship. I became a nuisance.’
Shia then admitted that Megalopolis ended up for ‘wackier’ than he’d expected, confessing that, while he put ‘wackiness’ into his character, he didn’t anticipate that feeling from the rest of the movie.
‘I never thought we were going for wacky. I thought my character was wacky and I served that for the film. But I didn’t think the whole movie was [going to be] wacky.’
Shia struggled to get on board with Francis Ford Coppola’s vision (Picture: Anthony Harvey/REX/Shutterstock)Megalopolis polarised critics, with almost equal numbers on both sides arguing that it was both Francis Ford Coppola’s best and worst film of all time.
Metro‘s Tori Brazier called it ‘the worst film I’ve ever seen,’ describing Shia’s character Clodio as ‘baffling’ and as something that is ‘not properly explained’.
The film lost a whopping $110m at the global box office upon its release, making it one of the most expensive movie financial failures of recent times.
And unfortunately it’s not the only recent box office bomb for Shia, whose 2015 film Man Down earned him just £7 from UK audiences after only one ticket was sold at a cinema in Burnley.
In fact, despite starring Shia alongside Gary Oldman, the film only made $450,000 (£338,000) and was quickly sent to video-on-demand services.
Metro has contacted Francis Ford Coppola for comment.
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