Legendary director Francis Ford Coppola isn’t concerned about the negative buzz circling Megalopolis, his forthcoming, self-funded epic that stars a laundry list of A-listers including Adam Driver, Dustin Hoffman, and Shia LaBeouf.
“This is exactly what happened with Apocalypse Now 40 years ago,” Coppola told The Daily Beast in a statement sent via an editorial apprentice during a break from the film’s ongoing post-production process.
Megalopolis is said to take place in a version of New York in the aftermath of its destruction. Seeking to rebuild, ideological differences between the main characters, a charismatic mayor and an architect, form the backbone of the plot. Coppola has said he based his script, in part, on the Catiline Conspiracy, a mysterious tale of an attempted coup in Ancient Rome.
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Several studio executives and industry insiders who saw the film—which currently has no set release date—at a March 28 screening came away skeptical of whether Megalopolis will be able to find a distributor, The Hollywood Reporter reported on Monday.
“It’s so not good, and it was so sad watching it,” one anonymous studio head went so far as to say, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “There is just no way to position this movie,” another distributor added.
Referring to his Vietnam War nightmare epic Apocalypse Now, released in the summer of 1979, Coppola added in his statement to The Daily Beast, “There were very contradicting views expressed, but the audience never stopped going to see the film, and to this day Apocalypse Now is still in very profitable distribution.”
“I am sure this will be the same situation with Megalopolis,” the director added definitively. “It will stand the test of time.”
At least one fellow Hollywood director agrees. Oscar nominee Gregory Nava, who helmed the 1997 biopic Selena, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that he saw Megalopolis and described it as “a visionary masterpiece.”
“It’s an unbelievable, astonishing film, and [Coppola] is pushing the boundaries of cinema,” Nava said, adding that stars Giancarlo Esposito and LaBeouf turned in particularly sterling performances. “[Coppola] has used visual effects, and things that before have simply been limited to superhero movies, in a way to evoke other kinds of emotions.”
Five-time Academy Award winner Coppola, widely considered to be among the greatest directors of all time, previously spoke out to dispute reports that the set of Megalopolis was “absolute madness.”
“I am on schedule and on budget,” Coppola told Deadline in January 2023. “These reports never say who these sources are. To them, I say, ha, ha, just wait and see.”
On Tuesday, an anonymous source told the Associated Press that the film will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this year. The news was initially reported by Deadline, who said the director had a “soft spot” for Cannes, noting it was the film festival that helped make Apocalypse Now the classic it is today.
Megalopolis will screen in competition on May 17.
“Megalopolis is a project that he wanted to achieve for so long and he did it independently, in his own way, as an artist,” Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux told Variety last week. “He built the legend of the Cannes Film Festival and it would be an honor to welcome him back, as a filmmaker who comes to present his new film.”
