2024 has a ton of anticipated movies on its release calendar, but none have the same mystique as Francis Ford Coppola‘s “Megalopolis.” The long-gestating, self-financed titan of a film went into production in November 2022, wrapped shooting in March 2023, and …well, since then, FFC has been editing, tinkering, etc. After Coppola stated last May that the film wouldn’t reach audiences in 2023, many wondered if the director had hit a couple of snares in post-production. Well, IndieWire reports (via the Accutron podcast) that Coppola has an update on “Megalopolis,” and it’s not as dire as all that.
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On the podcast, the director confirmed that his latest feature will indeed hit theaters in 2024. “It’s only going to be a few months and it’ll be out,” Coppola said. That’s great news, but it also raises many other pressing questions. Given that “Megalopolis” is a self-budgeted movie, what will distribution be like? Will a studio step in to help out? Will Coppola finance that himself, too? And what about a trailer? And how long is “a few months”? Could Coppola premiere “Megalopolis” as early as the Cannes Film Festival in May? The director didn’t elaborate, only adding, “All I can say is I love the actors in it. It’s unusual, and it’s never boring. Other than that, wait and see.”
“Wait and see;” got it. The movie world will anxiously do just that as the Spring festival circuit takes shape in the coming weeks, curious if “Megalopolis” will be part of it. After all, it’s not every year a filmmaker puts up a small fortune to finance an opus. And then there’s the enormous ensemble cast of Coppola’s new film. Adam Driver leads the players with Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeaouf, and Chloe Fineman also starring. But that’s not all. Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, D.B. Sweeney, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Bailey Ives, Grace Vanderwaal, James Remar, and Giancarlo Esposito round out the main cast. That’s a diverse set of players if there ever was one.
And the size of the movie’s cast should give away how ambitious Coppola’s scope is with “Megalopolis.” The hype for this film is so big because of how mammoth a project it is. Coppola said so himself in an interview about it with Deadline last May, downplaying rumors of on-set difficulties with crew members. “From my point of view, I was on schedule, which, on a big, difficult movie, is hard to do,” Coppola told the outlet. “I love my actors, and there is not one of them I would change. The movie has a style that went beyond my expectations. That’s sincerely how I feel. The most important thing is the life the film might have when eventually it cuts together and blossoms.” Coppola was granted a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement last August for “Megalopolis,” ostensibly for reshoots, but since then, he’s been busy in post, readying the film for release.
So now it’s a matter of if Coppola’s film is indeed almost finished like he says it is. And if it is, leading man Driver thinks moviegoers are in for a treat. In an interview with Collider last year, the actor teased that Coppola “takes a risk” with “Megalopolis,” and praised his vision for being “so imaginative and big and epic and bold.” But on the other hand, Jon Hamm described the film as “impossible” for Coppola to make. No, Hamm isn’t in “Megalopolis,” but he did participate in an early table read of the script. “He’s making a $300 million movie that he just has wanted to make,” Hamm told the “Back To One” podcast last June. “I did a table read of it, I know how impossible this movie is to make. But he’s making it. And God bless him, that’s exactly what he should be doing.”
Now it’s only a matter of time before critics and audiences measure up “Megalopolis” as a filmmaking master’s final epic or an epic disaster. But how soon is “a few months” away? Let’s hope Coppola has a definitive answer for us about that soon.
