Last month, GQ reported Hollywood legend Francis Ford Coppola, 82, would bet on himself as he famously did in his 1970s heyday – as he’s set to invest $120 million of his own money to produce a four decades-in-the-making passion project.
Not much is currently known about The Godfather director’s planned Sci-Fi epic, entitled “Megalopolis.” Reportedly, he is courting Cate Blanchett, James Caan, Oscar Isaac, Forest Whitaker, and Zendaya for roles.
In the past, the rumor mill indicated Coppola’s original script may be a utopian commentary about an architect dealt the daunting task of rebuilding an alternate New York City (called “New Rome,” as Coppola’s pitched it) after it’s completely lost to disaster.
Following his last true critical and (somewhat) mainstream success, 1997’s The Rainmaker, Coppola was gearing up to finally shoot “Megalopolis” in the early 2000s. For obvious reasons, it became one of many projects derailed by, and swiftly put into turnaround due to the September 11 attacks.
Nevertheless, while Coppola’s film career has slowed in the years since, his experimental vision – and commitment therein to realizing it – has not.
“I couldn’t care less about the financial impact whatsoever. It means nothing to me,” Coppola reiterated to GQ. Asked if he was at all worrisome of delivering a box office failure mirroring those that contributed to his 1980s demise, namely One From the Heart, Coppola doubled down. He noted that he reversed his misfortunes back then into long-term prosperity by founding an aptly-timed wine company that, to this day, has zero debts.
The man behind the masterpiece trio of The Godfather Parts I and II (1972, 1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979) feels he, in the grand scheme of things, has nothing left to lose because he really has nothing more to prove. The patriarch of one of Hollywood’s most magnificent families has “bequeathed much” to all his children, whom he believes “won’t have a problem” if Dad loses big. Most of them – including Oscar-winning filmmaker, Sofia – have found success in the business on their own “know-how” and merit, independent of their film royalty namesake.
Even on the off chance they should falter, Coppola maintains his kin will always have the guarantees ensured by the family winery to fall back on.
The multi-Oscar winner is willing to “go all in” once more, with feeling, because the fear of not “breaking bank” theatrically is no deterrent he chooses to surrender to, as the vast majority of new wave original filmmakers flock to streaming. Coppola doesn’t perceive beautifully crafted, big-budgeted non-franchise tentpoles like Christopher Nolan’s Covid-ravaged Tenet as failures at all, either; more so as a encapsulators of a slanted time – films that squeaked through past the superhero caper gatekeepers.
To him, the risk of taking a gigantic loss with a movie too ambitious to draw studio interest is worth it if it means rewarding the world with one last Coppola classic before he shift’s this mortal coil. And in more meta ways than one, too, as it’s teased plot GQ also broadly gathered was “a love story that is also a philosophical investigation into the nature of a man” sounds about as Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze, Adaptation (2002) and Synecdoche, New York (2008) as it gets.
Apropos, as it took Jonze’s ex-father-in-law, Coppola, taking a shining interest in Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich breakout script decades ago to get this inventive pair’s first of many collaborations made – christening them examples of the “next-gen” Hollywood-“made” class in the process.
Now, Coppola must rely on the man in the mirror to get his “best film never made” entry off the rack; he’d have it no other way.
“I know that ‘Megalopolis,’ the more personal I make it, and the more like a dream in me that I do it, the harder it will be to finance.”
If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?
