LOS ANGELES, CA.- There is no kind way to put it: Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” died on arrival over the weekend.

Coppola, 85, spent decades on the avant-garde fable, ultimately selling part of his wine business to raise the necessary funds — about $120 million in production costs and another $20 million or so in marketing and distribution expenses. But moviegoers rejected the film: Ticket sales from Thursday night through Sunday will total roughly $4 million in North America, according to analysts, slightly below worst-case scenario prerelease projections.

“Megalopolis” played in nearly 2,000 theaters in the United States and Canada. As of Saturday evening, it was on pace to place sixth in the weekend box office derby, behind even “Devara Part 1,” a poorly reviewed, three-hour, Telugu-language action drama that was available in about 1,000 theaters.

“Megalopolis” is about a brilliant architect (played by Adam Driver) who wants a society to lift itself out of the gutter. Ticketbuyers gave the film a D+ grade in CinemaScore exit polls.

Adam Fogelson, the top movie executive at Lionsgate, which distributed “Megalopolis,” said the company was “proud to partner” with Coppola to give the film “the wide theatrical release it deserves.”

“Like all true art, it will be viewed and judged by movie audiences over time,” Fogelson added.

In the 1980s, when Coppola first began to develop the film, “Megalopolis” may well have had a chance in theaters. It was a time in Hollywood when ambitious films for thinking people could be eased into a few theaters and allowed to build an audience over months, adding more screens week by week and sometimes playing for a year or more. Hollywood could afford to take it slow in part because moviegoing dominated leisure time: Not only was there no internet yet, cable TV and video games were still in their relative infancy.

For the weekend, the No. 1 movie in North America was “The Wild Robot” (Universal/DreamWorks Animation), which was on pace to collect a sturdy $35 million over its first three days in theaters. “The Wild Robot” cost $78 million to make. It received euphoric reviews.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Warner Bros.) was second, taking in about $16 million, for a four-week domestic total of roughly $250 million. “Transformers One” (Paramount) was third, collecting an estimated $9 million, for a two-week domestic total of about $40 million.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.