Legendary director Francis Ford Coppola is finally getting to make his most ambitious project Megalopolis. The filmmaker had taken to social media to explain the journey behind making his dream project, which has reportedly been in development since the ‘80s. The film stars Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Forest Whitaker, Aubrey Plaza, and Jon Voight.
While Megalopolis is slated to release later this year, its production woes have plagued it since its announcement. However, the Apocalypse Now filmmaker’s vision has been validated by lead actor Adam Driver, who recently revealed that the film had shaped up well and described it as ‘undefinable’.
Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis Has Been Four Decades In The Making
An intense and stressful production is not new for the maverick filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. The visionary behind The Godfather trilogy has fought many battles in his heyday, with his production troubles during the war film Apocalypse Now being infamous for its intensity. The war drama’s filming process was the subject of a documentary called Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.
Coppola mentioned in an interview with Ain’t It Cool News that he had been working on Megalopolis’ script for years and that it was too ambitious to get made. Reportedly following the story of a renegade architect who wants to redesign New York City to become a utopia, he mentioned that it was hard for him to figure out how to mount it after 9/11. He said,
“After the events of September 11th, 2001, I just didn’t know how to continue with it…a movie about the aspiration of utopia with New York as a main character, and then all of a sudden you couldn’t write about New York without just dealing with what happened and the implications of what happened. The world was attacked and I didn’t know how to try to do with that. I tried.”
Back in 2007, he had mentioned that he had abandoned the project after doing table reads with multiple actors. The filmmaker then revived the project in 2019, opting to fund the movie himself. While he initially wanted Jude Law and James Caan to be in the film, Francis Ford Coppola finally chose Adam Driver, Forest Whittaker, Shia LaBeouf, and Nathalie Emmanuel (via Deadline).
Adam Driver Has Great Things To Say About Megalopolis
Described as a sci-fi epic, Megalopolis began filming in late 2022. Like many of Francis Ford Coppola’s films, this one too reportedly had intense and chaotic schedules, leading to many prominent crew members exiting the film. However, the filmmaker rubbished these reports and rumors mentioned that they were on budget (via Deadline).
Recently, Adam Driver mentioned that the film had shaped out well and that the scale of the film was something audiences had never witnessed before. He said in an interview with The Face,
“It’s kind of undefinable, which feels very general until you watch the movie. Then my answer will be perfect. There’s not a lot of precedent for it and it’s wild on a big scale, which is what’s really unique about it.”
Driver reportedly plays the role of Caesar, a renegade architect who hopes to redesign New York City but is stopped by his girlfriend’s father Frank Cicero, a traditionalist, played by Forest Whitaker. The actor mentioned how the lead character reminded him of Coppola himself and how many aspects of Ceasar were reflective of the filmmaker. He said,
“[Ceasar is] a visionary. He’s very much Francis [Ford Coppola], in a way, where he’s investigated every way of how people can do something and is trying not to get stuck on the right answer. That’s an idea that’s moving to me – and one that reflects Francis.”
The film is expected to release in late 2024. While the film was reportedly wrapped in 2023, the extensive post-production of the film has been ongoing.
