Fritz Lang’s 1927 film, Metropolis, is one of the most well-known and critically acclaimed films of all time, boasting iron-cast ratings of 8.4 on IMDb and 98 on Metacritic.
And now a piece of that movie history could be yours. (If you’re a millionaire.)
Movie Poster Exchange, an original movie posters/collectables site, is currently listing one of the four surviving original posters, known to exist, with a Buy Now price of $850,000.
Two of the other four are housed in museums – the Museum of Modern Art and the Austrian National Library Museum – and the other is part of a private collection, rumoured to be owned by Leonardo DiCaprio.
Bleeding Cool have a long and cinephile-oriented interview with Sean Linkenback, co-founder of Movie Poster Exchange, who talks about the importance of and background to the Metropolis poster, all of which you can read here.
Linkenback also lists the following as comparisons to the sale of this current poster, which itself holds the current record for highest sale of a movie poster:
- Metropolis, 1927, German 3-Sheet — $690,000 in 2005
- The Mummy,1932, One-Sheet Poster — $410,000 in 1997
- King Kong,1933, 6-Sheet Poster — $345,000 in 2008
- The Black Cat, 1934, One-Sheet Poster Style B – $334,600 in 2009
- Dracula, 1931, One-Sheet Poster Style F — $310,700 in 2009
- Frankenstein, 1931, One-Sheet Poster — $212,400 in 2009
And thus if it were to go for the asking price, it would make movie poster history once more, selling for almost $1m.
Linkenback himself is a movie poster expert, and according to Wikipedia, he was an adviser on Sotheby’s first ever comic book auction, so he is clearly not a newcomer to dealings of this kind.
To see the full listing for what is currently the only original 3-sheet poster for the film on the market, if you have $850,000 to spend on movie history, you can click right here.
Source: via THR.
