Barry Levinson will direct a film about the making of The Godfather, featuring Oscar Isaac and Jake Gyllenhaal – sounds like an offer we can’t refuse.
Oscar Isaac and Jake Gyllenhaal are set to star opposite one another inĀ Francis And The Godfather, a new Barry Levinson film charting the conflicted production of, well, The Godfather. As a true American classic, the 1974 film stands as perhaps the best example of the American New Wave era, where precocious, young filmmakers – such as Francis Ford Coppola, looked to seize creative control of the filmmaking process from studios like Paramount, the traditional power-brokers in the Hollywood system.
Deadline is reporting that Isaac will play Coppola whilst Gyllenhaal will play Robert Evans, Paramountās then-Head of Production. Battles between the two throughout the production were legendary and are well-chronicled in books such as in Peter Biskindās account of the New Hollywood era, Easy Riders and Raging Bulls. The casting of Marlon Brando, at that point considered far past his prime, and changing the story location from Kansas to New York, were just a couple of the creative choices that Coppola and Evans fought bitterly over.
Levinson has reworked the film from a Black List script by Andrew Farrotte, for whom this will be a debut feature project. The project is being handled worldwide by Endeavour, with Coppola, who has just finished his own reconstruction of The Godfather Part III, seemingly giving his blessing to it.
More on this rather fascinating film as we have it.
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