The controversy over the use of a fake film critic, supposedly generated by artificial intelligence, in the first trailer for Francis Ford Coppola's film “Megalopolis” has claimed its first victim.
Variety reports that Lionsgate has cut ties with veteran marketing consultant Eddie Egan in the wake of the scandal, and that the hoax was likely created by an AI chatbot like ChatGPT. Variety had ChatGPT generate quotes from negative reviews of Coppola's films The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, claiming that the results were strikingly similar to what was seen in the trailers. Puck's Matt Belloni also reports that Lionsgate has cut ties with Egan.
However, sources told IndieWire that Egan and Lionsgate had no intention of fabricating the quote, but the source material for the quote had not been properly fact-checked or vetted. The campaign aimed to show that Coppola's films were misunderstood and “ahead of their time,” even going all the way back to his '70s masterpieces. Currently, Megalopolis has a very mixed score of 59 out of 100 on Metacritic, with some critics loving it and others hating it. The campaign was clearly trying to lean in the negative direction.
Egan did not respond to IndieWire's request for comment, and a representative for Lionsgate declined to comment.
On Wednesday, Lionsgate pulled the trailer for Coppola's next big movie after it was discovered that quotes from legendary film critics like Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris that slammed classics like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now were not taken from actual film reviews — many of the critics in question were also big fans of some of the films at the time.
After pulling the trailer on Wednesday, Lionsgate apologized to Coppola and took responsibility for the mix-up: “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved, director Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for the unforgivable errors in our review process. We failed, and we're sorry,” a spokesperson said.
Egan is a longtime marketing executive who spent 19 years at Universal and has also worked at Illumination and STXfilms, and more recently worked as an independent consultant, working on campaigns for films such as “Into the Woods,” “Bridge of Spies” and “All Seventeen.”
Lionsgate is handling distribution of Megalopolis in the US, with the film scheduled for theatrical and IMAX release on September 27. However, Coppola is footing the marketing bill and has enlisted Utopia, run by his nephew Robert Schwartzman, to provide “alternative marketing services” for the film.
