Nearly five years ago, acclaimed filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola talked about his plans to finally create a movie he’s had cooking in his head since the ‘80s. He even tried to make it during the early 2000s, but 9/11 made that impossible, since he felt it would be in bad taste. But twenty years later, he’s finally made Megalopolis, and it’ll see the light of day later this year.
During a recent episode of the Accutron podcast, Coppola confirmed it would be “a few months” of post-production, after which the movie would be screened in theaters. Production on the movie wrapped in March 2023, and iti landed landed an interim agreement with SAG-AFTRA in August so reshoots could be done during the Hollywood strikes. Of the upcoming movie, Coppola called it “unusual and never boring. Other than that, wait and see.”
Billed as an epic sci-fi drama and a love story, Megalopolis stars Adam Driver as Caesar, an architect looking to rebuild New York City into a utopia after a “devastating disaster.” His progressive views end up clashing with his lover’s father, who’s described as having a more classical view of society. The film’s cast also includes Nathalie Emmanuel, Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne, Shia LeBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, and Giancarlo Esposito.
Megalopolis will be Coppola’s first film since 2011’s Twixt, though production hasn’t been without its troubles. By this time last year, it was reported the film had grown past its initial $120 million budget and saw the departure of several key staff, including production designer Beth Mickle and the VFX team, including supervisor Mark Russell. Both Coppola and Driver pushed back on those claims, with the latter calling it “one of the best shooting experiences I’ve had.” But as outlets have previously noted, Coppola productions can sometimes be chaotic, as was the case with Apocalypse Now (which was cited as a comparison point in that report) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
[via IndieWire]
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