‘Metropolis’ Movie Poster Poised for Record Sale

Leo supposedly has one. Two others are in museums. Now you could own the only other existing copy of the Metropolis 3-sheet movie poster – that is if you have $850,000 to spare.

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The Movie Poster Exchange, a new e-commerce site, is offering this rare poster for sale at a record price.

It features an iconic image from Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic, considered by many to be one of the most important movies and the most important science fiction film of all time.

This is the international version of the poster and the image was only used on the 3-sheet version (the full-size 41”x 81” posters most people are familiar with). 

There are only three other known copies of this poster: One is in the Museum of Modern Art, one in the Austrian National Library and one is in the hands of a private collector (thought to be Leonardo DiCaprio).

The last time this poster changed hands it sold for $690,000, which is the current record for a movie poster. Before that it sold on eBay for about $200,000. It was originally acquired in Germany by a long-time poster collector.

Sean Linkenback, one of the owners of the poster exchange, called it “the crown jewel of the poster world.” Linkenback is trying to bring some regularity and consistency to the movie poster-collecting world, including adopting the CGC 10-point standard for posters.  Read a full interview with him here explaining the ins and outs of poster collecting.  

Though posters movies were produced in abundance, few have survived for movies made in the ‘20s and ‘30s.  Most people did not consider them art and disposed of them when the movie’s run was over.

For example, one copy of a very large 6-sheet from the 1931 Universal Films classic Frankenstein is known to exist and no one has ever located any of the larger posters from the Dracula, which was also released in 1931.  Similarly, no copies of the poster from the famous 1922 German film Nosferatu have survived to the present.  

See the Metropolis poster below.