So, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is going well. Here’s a look back at the problems, crises and controversies around the auteur’s four-decade passion project.
In an industry where things rarely seem to go smoothly, it takes quite something to earn the reputation of Apocalypse Now. 45 years on, Francis Ford Coppola’s war epic is still the go-to example of a chaotic production. Compared to 238 days in a Philippine jungle, hampered by typhoons and heart attacks, the soundstage-set Megalopolis should have been a breeze.
It has not, dear reader, been a breeze. By now, the number of setbacks, controversies and missteps lining up at Megalopolis’ Fritz Lang-inspired doors seems to be reaching near-legendary proportions – so we’ve decided to put them all in one place. We’ll update the list when someone drops the only film reel down a well, or something.
One From The Heart
The story of Megalopolis starts way back in 1977, when the idea struck Coppola towards the end of shooting Apocalypse Now. He began developing his ideas in 1983, and ultimately planned to put the film before cameras in 1991.
Unfortunately, he had a few financial woes to deal with. A series of commercial disappointments in the form of One From The Heart (1982) and Tucker: The Man And His Dream (1988) meant his “one for them, one for me” ratio was a little off.
To get out of his debt to the studios, he instead spent the 90s making slightly more economically minded fare: Matt Damon legal drama The Rainmaker (1997) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). That something as transparently bonkers as his resulting vampire flick could ever be considered a cow-tow to commercial interests is hilarious in 2024, but there we are.
Global events (part one)
A decade on from its first scheduled shoot, Megalopolis was ready to go in front of the cameras once again. A series of table reads featuring the likes of Nicolas Cage, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Uma Thurman had been well-received, but only reinforced the idea that this would be a tough shoot. ‘I don’t know how he’s gonna make this movie,’ Jon Hamm remembers thinking after attending a similar workshop. “But […] God bless him, that’s exactly what he should be doing.”
Coppola and his collaborators shot around 30 hours of second unit footage in New York later that year, but it wasn’t long before the real world caught up with them. The film, which centred around the rebuilding of the iconic city following a devastating incident, would have hit far too close to home following the events of 11th September 2001, and the director took his passion project back to the drawing board. “I feel as though history has come to my doorstep,” he said.
Francis sold too much wine
His filmmaking career unexpectedly halted, Coppola was lucky enough to have a rather lucrative side gig on the go. His Napa Valley winery and resort company were, by the early 2000s, making him enough money that the days of taking a begging bowl to studio execs were over. This seems to have been terrible news.
“For the first time in his life, he could finance a movie, and therefore he didn’t have to do what anybody else said, and that paralyzed him,” his friend Wendy Doniger told Time. “He had no excuse this time if the film was no good. What froze him was having the power to do exactly what he wanted so that his soul was on the line.”
Coincidentally, production on Megalopolis wouldn’t begin again properly until Coppola sold his business in 2021.
Global events (part two)
Cate Blanchett, Oscar Isaac, Jessica Lange, Jude Law, Michelle Pfeiffer, Forest Whitaker, and Zendaya were reportedly in negotiations to star in the film by March 2020. What happened next is fairly well-known, and not really in the purview of your friendly neighbourhood film magazine. Suffice to say, none of the above have a role in the movie.
Read more: Alien: Romulus and 45 years of fascinating androids
“Has this guy ever made a movie before?”
This is not, we’d imagine, the vote of confidence any director wants from their crew a few weeks into production. When that director has spent his 50-plus year career making some of the biggest, most influential blockbusters of all time, it’s also a bit of a surprise.
Nonetheless, throughout production of Megalopolis, rumours swirled that all was not going exactly according to plan. Halfway through the shoot in the winter of 2022/23, the film’s production designer, supervising art director and entire VFX team all left the project, leaving the film, according to the Hollywood Reporter, with “no art department”.
Star Adam Driver gave a statement to IndieWire in Coppola’s defence, however. “The environment that’s being created by Francis, is one of focus and inspiration,” he said. “As of now, we’re on schedule, making our days, and honestly, it’s been one of the best shooting experiences I’ve had.”
Misconduct allegations
Allegations of inappropriate conduct have dogged Coppola’s movie at least since a Guardian article described him kissing female extras to “get them in the mood” for a night club scene back in May. Things came to a head, however, when Variety published a pair of videos showing just that in July, leading its sister publication, Deadline, to publish an utterly bizarre editorial downplaying “pseudo-salacious” rumours and accusing Variety of “publish[ing] for clicks”.
“The story did not get much traction, though it caused pain for the filmmaker”, Deadline co-editor-in-chief Mike Fleming Jr wrote. “It broke and he found out about the story as he was on his way to join his incoming children and relatives as they were gathering for a family memorial for Eleanor Coppola, director of the iconic documentary Heart of Darkness, to whom FFC was married for more than 60 years.”
“There is just no way to position this movie”
The film’s first private screening in Los Angeles was a mixed affair. One viewer called Megalopolis “a brilliant, visionary masterpiece.” Another said it was “a date in the history of cinema”.
On the whole though, the studio execs Coppola was hoping to impress into giving the film distribution were less happy. “It’s so not good,” one said, anonymously. “There is just no way to position this movie”, said another. “Batshit crazy” was another phrase doing the rounds, and since then it appears to have stuck. Whatever Megalopolis is, it sounds determinedly uncommercial. This, of course, could be a good thing.
Trailer controversy
In August 2024, Lionsgate released a trailer for Megalopolis. Featuring a voiceover from Laurence Fishburne (who also stars in the film), it leant into the “misunderstood genius” angle Coppola himself has spoken about before in relation to Apocalypse Now. The trailer took quotes from such critical luminaries as Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, all lambasting the director’s most acclaimed works on their initial screenings.
We’re talking about the trailer in the past tense, of course, because Lionsgate was forced to take it down less than 24 hours after its release. As it turned out, every single one of those quotes either referred to a different film than they claimed or was made up entirely. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process,” Lionsgate told Variety. “We screwed up. We are sorry.”
Thankfully, IGN ripped the trailer and, at the time of writing, it’s still available on their YouTube channel. Take a look, in all its legally dubious glory:
