Set to turn 80 in a few days, Francis Ford Coppola is celebrating by announcing plans to begin production on a passion project he’s been dreaming about for more than three decades.
Written in the early 1980s, Megalopolis got pushed to the backburner after Coppola got involved with other projects.
When he finally did start production on the NYC-centric film decades later, Coppola had to shut it down after the September 11 attacks for a number of reasons, including that the film chronicles an architect trying to reconstruct a utopian version of the city following a mega-disaster.
“So yes, I plan this year to begin my longstanding ambition to make a major work utilizing all I have learned during my long career, beginning at age 16 doing theater, and that will be an epic on a grand scale, which I’ve titled Megalopolis,” Coppola told Deadline. “It is unusual; it will be a production on a grand scale with a large cast. It makes use of all of my years of trying films in different styles and types culminating in what I think is my own voice and aspiration. It is not within the mainstream of what is produced now, but I am intending and wishing and in fact encouraged, to begin production this year.”
Actors like Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, and Russell Crowe have been attached to the project in the past and Coppola is reportedly looking at Jude Law for the lead role.
It’s possible Megalopolis could begin production as soon as this year.
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