Francis Ford Coppola‘s “Megalopolis” has been 20 years in the making. He’ll be self-financing this picture, which will be his final film. That’s right, Coppola will be self-funding the just under $100 million project. Even selling part of his Coppola Wine business to do so while breaking a cardinal rule for filmmakers; never put your own money into a picture.
Coppola talked to The Hollywood Reporter about self-funding and said. “There’s a certain way everyone thinks a film should be, and it rubs against the grain if you have another idea. People can be very unaccepting, but sometimes the other idea represents what’s coming in the future. That is worthy of being considered.”
It has been revealed that Adam Driver (“House of Gucci”) and Nathalie Emmanuel (“Game of Thrones“) will join Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Voight on cast. The plot has been described as “an architect wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster.”
The director is doing this film for no other reason than he feels he should make it. “What would make me really happy? It’s not winning a lot of Oscars because I already have a lot and maybe more than I deserve,” Coppola told Deadline. “And it’s not that I make a lot of money, although I think over time it will make a lot of money because anything that the people keep looking at and finding new things, that makes money. So somewhere down the line, way after I’m gone, all I want is for them to discuss [Megalopolis] and, is the society we’re living in the only one available to us?”
He continued to explain, as only a visionary filmmaker like him could. “How can we make it better? Education, mental health? What the movie really is proposing is that utopia is not a place. It’s how can we make everything better? Every year, come up with two, three or four ideas that make it better. I would be smiling in my grave if I thought something like that happened, because people talk about what movies really mean if you give them something. If you encouraged people to discuss marriage and education and health and justice and opportunities and freedom and all these wonderful things that human beings have conceived of. And ask the question, how can we make it even better? That would be great. Because I bet you they would make it better if they had that conversation.”
Frankly, we cannot wait to see the final product from this passion project. We’ll let you know what we hear about this and other projects.
