Adam Driver has talked glowingly about Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, praising the experience of making it and describing the film itself as “amazing”.
In terms of scale, Megalopolis is perhaps the biggest project director Francis Ford Coppola has undertaken since Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992. Its budget is $120m – a sizeable sum given that it’s an independent project – and its cast is starry, with Adam Driver, Dustin Hoffman, Forest Whitaker and Aubrey Plaza among the big names.
So far, little has been divulged about the film, although it’s said to be set in a New York City of the future that has been ravaged by an unspecified disaster. Filming on the production finished in March this year, and World of Reel reports that Megalopolis could premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024.
While details about the film are hard to come by, one cheerleader for Coppola’s epic is Adam Driver, who recently spoke in glowing terms about working with the director in an interview with Collider.
“Because [Coppola] financed it himself,” Driver said, “it made the shooting process one of the best experiences, if not the best shooting experience, I’ve had… It felt like he was in control of the movie he wanted to make and that was it.”
As for the film itself, Driver wouldn’t be drawn on whether he’d seen a rough cut, but described it as “amazing.”
“The movie is wild,” he said. “It’s so imaginative and big and epic, and it’s bold. It takes a risk, and I couldn’t be more excited for it.”
It all sounds far more positive than a report from January this year, in which it was claimed that the set was ‘chaotic’ and facing severe difficulties – something Coppola himself denied at the time.
Coppola has spent decades either developing Megalopolis or attempting to get it financed; the film almost came together in the early 2000s, but fell apart in the wake of 9/11. Filming finally got underway in November 2022, and despite reports of key crewmembers departing, finished on schedule in March.
The veteran director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now has clearly put a lot of the line for Megalopolis – including his own vineyard. Here’s hoping the resulting film is as promising as it sounds.
