‘The Wild Robot’ has conquered first place at the box office with $35 million from 3,962 venues, while garnering praise-worthy reviews across the industry.

On the other side, Francis Ford Coppola‘s long-awaited sci-fi epic ‘Megalopolis’ fumbled its box office debut, bringing in only $4 million from 1,854 North American theaters.

Initial estimates targeted ‘Megalopolis’ in the $5 million to $7 million range — still a horrid number for the $120 million self-financed film from Coppola.

‘Megalopolis’ opened in sixth place with a slew of mixed to poor reviews. The film holds a 49% from critics and a 34% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, while Cinemascore granted the film a score of D+.

A big factor of rendering ‘Megalopolis’ a box office flop could be the lack of interest and continuing controversy surrounding the film, resulting in modern audiences paying little to no attention to the film.

Coppola self-funded the project and earned distribution from Lionsgate. The film will likely be reduced to a tax write-off, and the studio is already looking at pulling the movie early from national theatres.

The film stars Adam Driver, as architect Cesar Catilina in the city of New Rome. He’s in favor of a utopian future, but Mayor Franklyn Cicero acts against him to stay committed to a regressive status quo. The theme of the film is humanity, embodied in the character of socialite Julia Cicero, the mayor's daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her morals and loyalties.

Giancarlo Esposito stars as Mayor Franklyn Cicero and Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia Cicero. Alongside the main trio is Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, and Dustin Hoffman.

The film released September 27, 2024.

“This was never destined to be a box office hit and is the very definition of a passion project,” says senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “That said, the film could enjoy long term interest from movie aficionados.”

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