In 2006, Sofia Coppola’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ premiered at Cannes and went to American theaters to a decent box office. Now, in 2026, the palace of Versailles, where his story is set, dedicates an exhibition to him at the Petit Trianon. That is, France was where those bouses were dedicated to him, but if we review the box office at the time, we can see that even there he earned about half of what he did in the US.
A disappointment. Sofia Coppola still defines that premiere that way. “We were very disappointed because we put a lot of work into it, but the film was not received very warmly.” However, twenty years later, it has become a cult piece worth recovering: in addition to the exhibition at Versailles, the documentary ‘Making Marie Antoinette’ was released and the respected publisher Criterion released a 4K version of the film approved by the director.
But… was there boos? Black Legends opened on the Croisette in May 2006. Coppola defended that it was exaggerated and came from a small group of elderly English journalists. In 2006, Roger Ebert estimated that five people, perhaps ten, booed, while many others applauded, and recalled that Variety talked about a boo in a Gaelic accent. A biography of the director maintained by the Cannes Festival itself states that the film “received acclaim from the public.”
Criticism crushed him. Coppola recently found a box full of negative reviews, titled ‘A Real Disaster’ and credited with many male critics dismissing it as feminine and overly aesthetic. He was also surprised that the soundtrack turned out to be scandalous, with Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bow Wow Wow, The Strokes and New Order playing at Louis XVI’s court. Curious in a scene which was already accustomed to experiments of a similar nature to that of the ‘Moulin Rouge.’
Bad box office. The film grossed $60.9 million worldwide on a $40 million budget. In the United States it stands at 15.96 million, more than a quarter of the total. France, whose Queen was depicted wearing Converse sneakers in the film, contributed 7.87 million. And in Spain, where it was released the following year, it added 3.3 million, almost double the UK. However, the recognition soon began: Milena Canonero won the Oscar for Best Costume Design for the lavish entertainment of the court. And the DVD did very well: U.S. sales totaled nearly $16.7 million, more than what it did at the box office.
In comes Tumblr. The most significant change in the film’s concept occurred ten years later: Coppola began to hear that people were discovering the film: a generation of Tumblr users grew up with its images in the 2010s. It became a reference for the pastel-colored Tumblr and flirtatious aesthetic alongside the first Lana Del Rey. Part of that cult following was fed by director friend Andrew Durham’s filming photos: Vogue France published a few in 2006, and from there they went onto Tumblr walls. In them the cast is seen wearing period costumes with laptops and headphones. The images now form the book ‘Making Marie Antoinette’, which accompanies the documentary as part of this late proof.
The next and definitive wave of claims came in the vertical video format. In The New York Times, the director explained that his daughters showed his montages of the film with Tiktok hip-hop songs. The circle closes with the Criterion Edition, which arrives now, while Generation Z again buys the physical format.
Documentary. ‘Making Marie Antoinette’ comes from the 80 hours that the director’s mother, Eleanor Coppola, recorded in Versailles during filming. Mother and daughter initially feared a lack of drama: the production was completed on time and under budget, without the crisis described in ‘Hearts in Darkness’, Eleanor’s sensational account of filming ‘Apocalypse Now’ directed by her husband.
Eleanor Coppola died in April 2024 without completing the documentary: Sofia completed it with family friends and regular collaborators, Diane Lane reading her mother’s diary in it. In the documentary, the director admits that ‘Marie Antoinette’ taught him that he would never make big or period films again and henceforth work with smaller crews and casts.
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