LOS ANGELES, CA.- Lionsgate executives say they have done all they can. They’ve booked 1,700 theaters, deployed guerrilla marketers to college campuses and pushed to flip negative reviews to their advantage. They have tied the film’s themes to the presidential race in TV ads.

And now it is up to moviegoers. Will people plunk down dollars and turn Francis Ford Coppola’s majestically bonkers “Megalopolis” into an against-all-odds success when it arrives Friday?

Or will the $120 million epic — in keeping with months of negative prerelease headlines — go down as a hall-of-fame flop?

Most box office analysts are predicting disaster. “Megalopolis” could arrive to as little as $5 million in weekend ticket sales in North America, according to surveys that track audience interest. Ticket sales are split roughly 50-50 with theater owners.

But there are glimmers of hope. The film received a 10-minute standing ovation when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. On Monday, Lionsgate, which is distributing and marketing “Megalopolis” for a fee, staged a preview at IMAX theaters across the country, selling out locations in New York, California, Massachusetts, Utah and Florida. The stunt was an effort to position what is essentially a big-budget art film as a broad-audience blockbuster.

“We want everyone to come,” Coppola, 85, said during a Q&A that was part of the IMAX event, clasping his hands together in simulated prayer.

Coppola is on Hollywood’s version of Mount Rushmore. He has six Oscars, winning his first for writing “Patton” (1970) and once winning three in one night for writing, directing and producing “The Godfather Part II” (1974). When no studio would finance “Apocalypse Now” (1979), he scraped together the money himself. He did the same thing with “Megalopolis,” selling part of his wine estate to raise funds — and he is hoping to have a similar result. “Apocalypse Now” cost $145 million to make and collected $500 million worldwide, after adjusting for inflation; it still generates sizable revenue on home video.

But the film business has changed dramatically since Coppola’s heyday, or even since the 1990s, when he last had a hit in theaters. (“Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” directed by Coppola and released in 1992, cost about $90 million to make and collected $500 million.) Back then, studio marketers could generate respectable opening-weekend results for almost any movie — good, bad, ugly — by running trailers and carpet-bombing NBC’s Thursday night lineup with ads.

Now, in the streaming age, there is no longer a floor: No amount of marketing hocus-pocus can convince people that original movies with mixed-to-negative reviews are worth the hassle and expense of trekking to a theater. Just look at Lionsgate’s track record at the box office: Four of the studio’s films over the past two months have been dead on arrival. (Lionsgate often limits financial risk by selling off overseas rights.)

Mostly gone, too, are the days when movies could “open” to mediocre results and slowly amass substantial ticket sales over weeks and months. There is simply too much competition for leisure time, especially from streaming services.

Still, Lionsgate gave “Megalopolis” the hardest push it could muster. After bigger studios balked at distributing the film — even with Coppola shouldering 100% of the financial risk, including for distribution and marketing — Lionsgate stepped in with genuine enthusiasm. The studio also has a history with Coppola; it distributes several of his self-financed films, including “Apocalypse Now,” on home video.

“We loved the idea of taking this movie to a broad audience at this particular point in time,” JP Richards, president of worldwide theatrical marketing for the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, said in an interview. “‘Megalopolis’ is about a great debate — what should the future of our society be? And it comes at a time when we are having the same political debate in the real world.”

Richards’ team had its work cut out for it.

Hollywood marketers tend to use a playbook that begins with boiling a movie down to a single, salable genre. Is this a comedy or a drama? It can’t be both, they will tell you. Consumers want a clear idea of what they are getting. Strong reviews can help, but only to a degree.

But “Megalopolis” is unboilable. It’s an avant-garde, dystopian, science-fiction fable that veers into satire, fever dream, mystery, romance and comedy. Adam Driver plays a visionary architect who is determined to rebuild a decaying city called New Rome as a utopia. Giancarlo Esposito is the city’s mayor. Jon Voight plays a wealthy buffoon with Donald Trump mannerisms. Shia LaBeouf spends a large part of the film in drag. (“Revenge tastes best while wearing a dress!”) Aubrey Plaza’s character is a maniacal television reporter named Wow Platinum but known as Money Bunny.

Reviews have been wildly divergent, with some critics cheering Coppola’s ambition and gonzo creativity and others decrying his return to cinemas as nothing short of tragic — the lurid spectacle of a filmmaking god who has self-immolated in his twilight.

Lionsgate tried to turn the divisive reviews to the film’s advantage, positioning it as one of those wild movies that you just have to judge for yourself. “So many questions, so many rewatches needed,” reads one of the studio’s marketing messages on the social platform X.

Then Lionsgate shot itself in the foot. To show that critics don’t always get it right when it comes to Coppola’s films, the studio released a trailer that cited negative snippets from reviews for “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.” While some critics did question those now-revered movies when they were released, the quotes Lionsgate used turned out to be fake. A consultant had used an artificial intelligence program to generate them.

“We screwed up,” Lionsgate said in a statement at the time, quickly pulling the trailer. “We are sorry.” (Richards declined to comment. Coppola seemed to appreciate the studio’s fast apology, saying in an email Tuesday: “Lionsgate has been my partner for 14 years, releasing ‘Apocalypse Now’ and other films. Old friends are the best friends.”)

If nothing else, the incident generated a torrent of publicity for the film.

Lionsgate rushed out a more traditional trailer, which has generated a substantial 15 million views online, according to the studio. To tie the political themes in “Megalopolis” to the presidential election, Lionsgate advertised on TV networks around the Sept. 10 debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump. An ad tailored for Fox News showed LaBeouf’s character (out of drag) surrounded by American flags and shouting: “We are here! We are taking our country back!” One tailored for the more liberal ABC audience had Esposito’s mayor sneering, “That man is a megalomaniac.”

To attract a younger audience, Lionsgate teamed with Utopia, a boutique film distribution and marketing company co-founded by Robert Schwartzman, who is Coppola’s nephew. Utopia has orchestrated guerrilla-style promotions on college campuses, including blanketing buildings with posters of ancient Rome. Utopia has also arranged for surprise screenings designed to generate word-of-mouth.

“Megalopolis” is nothing if not a conversation starter. As the lights came up after the IMAX event Monday, two ticket buyers stared at each other with wide eyes.

“Oof,” one said.

“Wow,” said the other.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.