Those who have not experienced the Cannes happening could also live the experience from their cinema.
Last week, Francis Ford Coppola and his Megalopolis marked the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Loved or hated, it's either way the crazy bet of a titan of the seventh art.
The least we can say is that this work that he has been glimmering for 40 years has attracted a lot of attention. Sometimes lynched, sometimes admired for its experimental originality, this contemporary peplum, a modern and futuristic epic, was screened last Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival. Aware of experiencing a historic moment – the return to Cannes of the two-time Palme d'Or director – the spectators above all witnessed a major surprise. To everyone's astonishment, between the four walls of the Grand Théâtre Lumière room, a strange phenomenon occurred: a man came on stage with a microphone in his hand and asked a question to the character played by Adam Driver present on the screen, as if they were in the same room and the canvas did not exist.
Coppola literally breaks the fourth wall at the screening of Megalopolis
With this happening, Coppola literally breaks the fourth wall and mixes cinema and theater. A design outside of conventions, which raised questions: will this event be reproduced in theaters and for each screening? Or was it simply to mark the occasion in Cannes?
A colossal film, colossal means… Interviewed by the American media DeadlineJean Labadie, boss of the Le Pacte distribution box in charge of distributing Megalopolis in France, confirmed that everything will be put in place to reproduce this performance.
“We will definitely be repeating a lot of these performances. With four showings a day in many theaters, it won't be easy to be able to do it for every screening. Everything will be organized, but we can't predict how many times we will be able to do it for every screening. achieve this performance. We will work on this issue with each operator in France to try to do it as much as possible.”
Because if the distributor wishes to set up this project, the operators will certainly have to find people ready to give the same speech four times a day and the rooms will have to be large enough to have space in front of the stage to accommodate the performer. . A headache, especially since the film will be broadcast worldwide in IMAX – a format that not all French cinemas have.
“In France, we only have twenty-two IMAX cinemas, but we really want to show the work of Francis Ford Coppola in the same way he imagined it, continues Labadie. How will this be done? It's not easy to say.”
A long battle therefore begins for Le Pacte which will have to convince operators to participate in “the Coppola experience”. For the moment, no official release date is known – perhaps for the best, time for the distributor to sort out its exceptional distribution strategy?
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