The poster has been assigned a $250,000 value in a bankruptcy filing by its current owner Kenneth Schacter, according to The Guardian, but it went up for sale with an $850,000 list price in March and some say it could be the first poster to sell for $1 million.
Schulz-Neudamm's painting of the artificial woman, or the Robot, is used by a mad scientist to seduce an race of workers in a totalitarian futuristic urban city. Made in Germany during the Weimar Period, Metropolis is set in the year 2026 in a dystopian society in which a wealthy elite rules from vast tower complexes, oppressing the workers who live in the depths below. The silent film was written by Lang and his wife Thea Von Harbou, and starred Brigitte Helm, Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel and Rudolf Klein-Rogge. In 2008, a print of Lang's original cut of the film was found in Argentina.
The poster is the film's most familiar promotional image, though at the time others were used as well for its promotion.
[Source: The Guardian]