Lionsgate fired the marketing consultant responsible for Francis Ford Coppola's latest Megalopolis trailer, which featured a bunch of negative AI-generated quotes from famous film critics.
Variety reports that sources say it wasn’t the movie company or marketing consultant Eddie Egan’s intention to have fake quotes. However, this accident resulted from an error in vetting the phrases he provided.
Lionsgate pulled the trailer for Megalopolis after it was discovered that the clip included fake quotes from real critics criticizing the legendary director's past films.
The trailer featured fabricated quotes with words like "self-indulgent," "hollow," "pretentious," and "sloppy" to describe Coppola’s acclaimed movies such as The Godfather (1972), Dracula (1992), and Apocalypse Now (1979).
In a statement to Variety, Lionsgate announced the immediate recall of the trailer, stating, "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."
Although the studio didn't explain the source of the fake quotes, online speculation suggests that the trailer editor may have used a generative AI tool, like ChatGPT, to generate quotes without verifying their authenticity.
The first teaser for Megalopolis was released in May, where Coppola described the film as the greatest work of his career, stating, "Our new film Megalopolis is the best work I’ve ever had the privilege to preside over."
Megalopolis, a self-financed sci-fi drama by Coppola, features an all-star cast including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney, and Dustin Hoffman.