Recognizing that “we screwed up,” the company removed the updated trailer—which had been posted on Wednesday—right away.
A representative for Lionsgate stated: “We sincerely apologize to the affected reviewers as well as to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this unacceptable mistake in our screening procedure. We made a mistake. We apologize.
Quotes regarding previous Coppola films from critics like Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, and Owen Gleiberman were featured in the teaser, however they were never included in their reviews.
The line “Genius is often misunderstood” was spoken over in the trailer.
The 85-year-old multi-Oscar winner has directed more than 20 movies, including The Godfather.
One of the misattributed statements from Kael’s 1972 review for The New Yorker stated that The Godfather was “diminished by its artsiness,” while in fact, Kael was a lover of the movie.
In his 1992 Chicago review, Roger Ebert did not describe Bram Stoker’s Dracula as “a triumph of style over substance,” and Gleiberman did not refer to the picture as “a beautiful mess” or draw attention to its “absurdity” in his 1992 Entertainment Weekly review.
