“Megalopolis” is finally here.
Francis Ford Coppola‘s $120 million self-funded “Roman epic” debuted its first look featuring “Megalopolis” stars Adam Driver and Nathalie Emmanuel who play a couple caught up in the revolutionary destruction of a utopian society.
Driver plays an idealistic architect and artist who is planning to rebuild a city that has fallen in part due to a corrupt mayor (Giancarlo Esposito). “Game of Thrones” alum Emmanuel stars as the mayor’s socialite daughter. The ensemble cast includes Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Chloe Fineman, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, D.B. Sweeney, Jason Schwartzman, Baily Ives, Grace Vanderwaal, and James Remar.
“Megalopolis” is debuting in competition at Cannes. Coppola told Vanity Fair that the long-gestating project was rewritten more than “300 times” across decades.
“I wasn’t really working on this screenplay for 40 years as I often see written, but rather I was collecting notes and clippings for a scrapbook of things I found interesting for some future screenplay, or examples of political cartoons or different historical subjects,” Coppola said. “Ultimately, after a lot of time, I settled on the idea of a Roman epic. And then later, a Roman epic set in modern America, so I really only began writing this script, on and off, in the last dozen years or so. Also, as I have made many films of many different subjects and in many different styles, I hoped for a project later in life when I might better understand what my personal style was.”
Enter: “Megalopolis,” which is the first feature Coppola himself is “presenting” with an accreditation in the title.
“Always respecting the original writer in films I made, and always insisting that their names appear above the title, such as it was with ‘Mario Puzo’s The Godfather,’ or ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula,’ it was only with ‘The Rain People’ and ‘The Conversation’ that it could have been permitted to have my own name as original writer on it,” Coppola said. “But then I was too insecure to present myself in such grandiosity.”
He continued, “Early on, I remember once I took 130 blank pages and put on a title page boldly announcing Francis ‘Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis,’ and under that, ‘All Roads Lead to Rome.’ I pretended it wasn’t totally blank, weighing it in my hands so I could imagine what one day it would feel like, and believe one day it could exist. Then later, once I had a draft, I must have rewritten it 300 times, hoping each rewrite would improve it, if only a half percent better.”
“Megalopolis” has not yet secured distribution, with Coppola’s attorney Barry Hirsch telling IndieWire that a distributor is the goal of its Cannes premiere. The feature will be Coppola’s return to Cannes following his respective Palme d’Or wins for “The Conversation” and “Apocalypse Now.” His other Cannes film was “Tetro,” which screened in Directors Fortnight.
