Megalopolis, The Wild Robot and more duke it out at the box office this weekend

The time has come for Francis Ford Coppola’s newest epic to hit screens. The early receptions for Megalopolis have been divided, with even our own EIC, Chris Bumbray, finding himself on the negative side of the reactions, stating in his review, “Indeed, I despise the fact that Megalopolis turned out to be such an unwieldy mess, as the last thing I wanted to do at this year’s TIFF was join the choir of Coppola haters – of which I’ll never be one, even if I didn’t like his movie.” Meanwhile, the most positive review may have come from Coppola himself as the director joined Letterboxd and gave Megalopolis five stars.

Inversely, the new animated film, The Wild Robot, has been given an immensely positive response as it currently sits at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. Both films will be hitting theaters this weekend and The Hollywood Reporter takes a look at the projections for the week’s new releases. Coppola’s passion project was a self-financed venture that had a price tag of $120 million before marketing. Unfortunately, the ambitious film is only projected to make $5 million to $7 million.

Meanwhile, the new Dreamworks animated feature The Wild Robot has both early buzz and the appeal of being a heartfelt family film that can be comparable to Inside Out 2‘s big business from this summer. It’s being predicted that the movie wins the weekend above past releases, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Transformers One, in the “$24 million range domestically, although more bullish forecasters believe it could easily fly past $30 million.” However, experts also kept in mind that Transformers One made $5 million less than projected after the film had the benefit of good word-of-mouth and action appeal as well as being a part of a popular IP.

While Coppola’s film explores the conflicts and politics of rebuilding a society, a film that aims to capitalize on election season is a new documentary from filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza about Donald Trump’s current bid to win the upcoming U.S. Presidential election. The film Vindicating Trump will be opening in 500 to 700 screens across the nation. The film was made in cooperation with Trump, who has been personally plugging the film, and comes from Faith-based distributor SDG, which recently put out the documentary Am I Racist?