After over a decade, Francis Ford Coppola is returning to the big screen with his self-funded film Megalopolis. In order to make the biggest splash possible with his comeback, Coppola has tapped some of Hollywood’s current monoliths to lead the charge, setting an A-List cast to carry his ambitious new movie.
And as of today, that cast includes Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Voight. Apparently, the prerequisite to be cast in Megalopolis is at least one Oscar or Emmy nomination, and these were the folks that fit the bill for Coppola.
We don’t know much about Coppola’s new production, but a name like Megalopolis (maybe you already guessed this, but that means “a very large city”) is certainly attention-grabbing. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the logline of the film reads, “The fate of Rome haunts a modern world unable to solve its own social problems in this epic story of political ambition, genius, and conflicted love.”
While adding that the film is set in “a New York steeped in echoes of ancient Rome,” GQ also asked Coppola to explain his vision behind Megalopolis. “It's very simple,” he said. “The premise of Megalopolis? Well, it's basically… I would ask you a question, first of all: Do you know much about utopia?”
To top it all off, The Godfather auteur will be paying this new cast with his own funds. The $120 million budget will come straight from Coppola, who has pledged money to some of his prior films like Apocalypse Now and One From the Heart.
“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,” Coppola told GQ about his self-financing logic. “And the longer it will earn money because people will be spending the next 50 years trying to think: What's really in Megalopolis? What is he saying? My God, what does that mean when that happens?”
Driver, Emmanuel, Whitaker, Fishburne, and Voight are the first confirmed cast members of Megalopolis, though a few more names were dropped last year when the film was beginning the casting process. Oscar Isaac, Cate Blanchett, Zendaya, Oscar Isaac, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, and The Godfather’s own James Caan were reportedly getting sized up for the project too, but no word on them yet. Can they all fit within a $120 million budget?
With a big roster already and reports of more A-listers being eyed for the project, Megalopolis looks to continue the trend of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities all under one marquee. Last year, Dune and Don’t Look Up featured almost every star known to mankind. Now, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Megalopolis are leading the charge.
