One of cinema’s living legends, at 85 years old, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (“The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now”) has finally made “Megalopolis,” an ambitious sci-fi epic he’s been dreaming of making since the 1980s. With the film set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later this month, in a matter of days, French distributor Le Pacte has released the first look teaser of the movie.
Starring two-time Oscar nominee Adam Driver (“BlacKkKlansman,” “Marriage Story”), “Megalopolis” is an epic science fiction drama centered around an architect, Cesar (Driver), who wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster. The personal, political, and romantic films are said to be inspired by a mix of the September 11 attacks, the murderous conspiracies of ancient Roman History, the influence of cable news, and much more. “To that, I added everything I had ever read or learned about,” Coppola told Vanity Fair recently.
Cesar also has the power to stop time, and in the first teaser for the clip, you can see Driver’s character do precisely that, much to his own shock and surprise.
Details that have been released describe Cesar as an idealist who aims to rebuild the city as a sustainable utopia. At the same time, the unscrupulous mayor, Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), has other plans. Frank’s socialite daughter Julia (“Game Of Thrones” star Nathalie Emmanuel) comes between the opposing men and their visions. Tired of the attention and power she was born with, Julia searches for her life’s meaning.
“Megalopolis” also stars Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jason Schwartzman, Grace VanderWaal, Kathryn Hunter, Talia Shire, Dustin Hoffman, and D. B. Sweeney.
Here’s the official synopsis:
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 seeds for ‘Megalopolis’ were planted when as a kid I saw H.G. Wells’ ‘Things to Come,’” Coppola recently said in a statement to Vanity Fair, revealing the first official look of the film last week. “This 1930s Korda classic is about building the world of tomorrow and has always been with me, first as the ‘boy scientist’ I was and later as a filmmaker.”
To make the long-gestating film, Coppola sold off part of his winery estate in Northern California to self-finance the $120 million budget.
Coppola also noted that he hadn’t been trying to write it for over 40 years, but occasionally, he would find inspiration to add to the film.
“I wasn’t really working on this screenplay for 40 years as I often see written, but rather I was collecting notes and clippings for a scrapbook of things I found interesting for some future screenplay, or examples of political cartoons or different historical subjects,” He explained. “Ultimately, after a lot of time, I settled on the idea of a Roman epic. And then later, a Roman epic set in modern America, so I really only began writing this script, on and off, in the last dozen years or so. Also, as I have made many films of many different subjects and in many different styles, I hoped for a project later in life when I might better understand what my personal style was.”
“Megalopolis” will be presented in competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. The film has no U.S. distributor yet, but that could easily change after Cannes. Watch the first teaser below.