Coppola’s Sci-Fi Odyssey: “Megalopolis” Blasts Off After 50 Years
It took legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola nearly five decades for a dream to concept and, now, in 2024, at the Cannes Film Festival, the canvas of Megalopolis is about to premiere in front of the audience. Megalopolis is no ordinary Hollywood feature; instead, “Filmmaker’s passion project,” instead.
In the late 1970s, shortly after his first version of Apocalypse Now, Coppola was dying to shoot Megalopolis. After that exhausting production, he imagined rebuilding New York City. Regular studios were uninterested in financing the project, thus financing remained a dream for many years. Coppola struggled for decades to make Megalopolis, experiencing failures, delays, and even at least one actual stopping.
But Coppola, the guy who once took out a mortgage to finish Apocalypse Now, was not ready to let his dream go. Already in 2019, he made a more drastic turn. He could not get any studio or financier to produce Megalopolis for him. Instead, he financed it all alone. The director took $120 million out of his pocket to undertake the “self-funded odyssey”. It became his first film since 2011 and the longest break between them in his entire film career.
In contrast, the filming process, carried out from November 2022, to March 2023, was not easy. The specter of a global epidemic hung over the work, making an already ambitious project even more complicated. Yet, Coppola proved himself as a filmmaker that never gives up. Having gathered a star cast that includes Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Jon Voigt, and Dustin Hoffman, he continued pursuing his vision.
Meanwhile, the filmmaker has a reputation of a person who takes financial risks for his creation. From his driven on-set experience during Apocalypse Now to the commercial flop of One From The Heart, Coppola has always known how to put his money where his fragile artistic mouth is. This approach has even conveyed through Megalopolis.
But the film itself, early murmurs subtly suggest, could be just as daring. Not every industry professional is left speechless by it – some even joke calling it ‘ crazy ‘, while others suggest it could be the decade’s defining masterpiece. But what is undeniable while watching Coppola’s last 50-year journey to make it happen is his artistic bravado.
A precarious spectacle awaits in Cannes – will Megalopolis become a hit or a flop? But the one story cinematic biography reaching for beyond the silver screen? Regardless – it is entirely merit of sheer dedication and beliefchanging the unimaginable into the existent.
