The latest teaser trailer for Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis has been released (via SFFGazette.com), offering our best look yet at the legendary filmmaker's "Roman epic fable."
Showcasing a society in chaos, we see here that Coppola is essentially telling a classic Ancient Rome fable in a modern version of America. The visuals are undeniably gorgeous and the director clearly hopes this will be his magnum opus (with a $120 million budget, most of which is his thought to be the director's own money, he's certainly sunk enough into it).
However, Megalopolis - which Coppola began writing in 1983 - still doesn't have distribution. Following a recent screening attended by studio and streaming executives, one distributor said, "There is just no way to position this movie," with the implication being that it's likely to struggle in theaters.
As a result, this one may end up on VOD/streaming.
Megalopolis is a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare.
Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.
The movie also stars Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney, and Dustin Hoffman.
"I thought it was kind of funny," Plaza recently told Deadline of the production problem rumours surrounding Megalopolis. "I would defend Francis all day long, but he doesn’t need my defense."
"I think when you’re on the inside of it, and you know what’s really going down, it’s almost like, 'Let them make up their stories and let them cause a big ruckus about it. Why not? Drum up some more attention for the movie.' I think it ends up, in my mind, all working for the movie."
The Legion star added, "People want that, especially with him, with all the stories about Apocalypse Now. They want it to be a disaster, they want some big epic...whatever. Knowing Francis like I do now, I would think that it wouldn’t bother him at all, that he would love the tales that are being told about the film, like, 'Go on, make up all the stories you want.'"
Megalopolis will premiere in competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival later this week.