After months shrouded in controversy – and 40 years within the making – Francis Ford Coppola’s characteristic Megalopolis will debut at Cannes movie pageant in Might.
The movie, a ardour venture, which the Godfather and Apocalypse Now director has funded with $120m of his personal cash, has been in improvement since 1983 when Coppola wrote the primary model of the screenplay.
Within the many years since, it has been introduced, delayed and deserted a number of occasions – with footage even shot then discarded in a number of cases.
Starring Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight, Shia LaBeouf, Laurence Fishburne and Dustin Hoffman, in addition to Coppola’s sister Talia Shire and his nephew Jason Schwartzman, the movie will lastly premiere in a gala slot at Cannes on 17 Might, Selection stories.
“I’ve recognized Francis because the centenary of cinema in 1995, and after I had my first 12 months at Cannes, he got here to current Apocalypse Now Redux,” Cannes director Thierry Frémaux advised Selection. “Megalopolis is a venture that he wished to attain for therefore lengthy and he did it independently, in his personal means, as an artist.”
Megalopolis wrapped manufacturing final 12 months. Plot particulars stay obscure, although it has lengthy been thought of a tough beast to movie: an epic that spans historic historical past and a cataclysmic future, riddled with esoterica and tortuous ideas.
Megalopolis’s official logline describes it as a “story of political ambition, genius and conflicted love” the place “the destiny of Rome haunts a contemporary world unable to resolve its personal social issues”.
In March, the movie screened for potential patrons – together with Common, Netflix and Sony – in an business occasion hosted at Common CityWalk Imax. In keeping with the Hollywood Reporter, responses had been combined, starting from a glowing commendation to 1 studio head placing it bluntly: “It’s so not good, and it was so unhappy watching it.”
No distributor is at present hooked up to the movie.
Early final 12 months, the Hollywood Reporter wrote of an nameless supply who mentioned the Megalopolis set was “absolute insanity” attributable to a excessive employees turnover, an escalating funds and visible results points.
Coppola and Driver each denied the allegations. “We’re on schedule,” Coppola advised Deadline. “I like the actors and the look is nice, I don’t know what anybody’s speaking about right here.”
Driver later wrote in an announcement: “I’ve been on units that had been chaotic and this one is way from it.”
Cannes appears a pure match for Coppola’s venture: he premiered Apocalypse Now on the pageant in 1979, which had a equally beleaguered manufacturing course of earlier than its rise to acclaim after its Cannes look.
This 12 months’s Cannes will run 14 to 25 Might, with the total choice of movies to be revealed on Thursday. Already locked in to debut exterior of competitors embrace George Miller’s Mad Max prequel Furiosa, in addition to opening evening characteristic The Second Act, starring Léa Seydoux and Vincent Lindon as actors in an absurdist meta-comedy directed by the favored French film-maker Quentin Dupieux.
