With Megalopolis, the Flop Era Returns to Cinemas

Just before previews began at a Lower Manhattan theater on a recent Saturday night, Tazer Army reflected on the Francis Ford Coppola movie “Megalopolis” before even seeing it.“There’s just so much lore,” Army said.She wasn’t wrong.The lore dates back more than 40 years, to when Coppola, the director of the “Godfather” films and “Apocalypse Now,” conceived the project.

Now 85, he finally made this long-gestating project a reality by selling part of his wine business to finance the film, which cost roughly $140 million to make and market.There were allegations of on-set misconduct, and a suit by Coppola over the accusations.

There was even a trailer with made-up quotations from famous movie critics.And the biggest piece of lore: the fact that “Megalopolis,” as its title does not bother to deny, is a grandiosely personal vision that seemed fated to lose a lot of money at the box office — something its dismal opening weekend haul of $4 million confirmed.The upshot is that “Megalopolis” is a film both about a tortured-genius artist (the architect Cesar Catalina, played by Adam Driver) overcoming obstacles to realize his solitary vision and the product of one.

It appears destined to be remembered as the latest instance of a Hollywood archetype that is every bit as key to the industry’s mythology as its biggest hits: the auteurist flop.“It seems you either have the epic, beautiful win of a film that is beloved, or the one that is wrapped up in ego and is scandalous,” said Maya Montañez Smukler, the head of U.C.L.A.’s Film and Television Archive Research and Study Center.“It’s the perverse pleasure in seeing somebody fail on such an enormous magnitude.”Even at the peak of Hollywood’s studio era, there were flops — ambitious, big-budget spectacles that got out of hand during production and crashed upon contact with the viewing public.

Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1963 epic, “Cleopatra,” starring Elizabeth Taylor, brought 20th...