Megalopolis: Coppola amazed the first spectators, and he is already working on his next film!

“It's surprising, it's unlike any other film at the moment,” writes one of the filmmaker's guests, invited to discover it alongside Nicolas Cage, Al Pacino, Spike Jonze, Darren Aronofsky…

Francis Ford Coppola invited around 300 people to discover Megalopolis on the Imax screen at the Universal City Walk cinema in Los Angeles last night. Mainly Hollywood distributors and reporters, but also relatives, family members, actor or director friends who supported him on this project or previous productions.

THE insiders for example recognized his sister Talia Shire, his nephew Nicolas Cage, as well as the filmmakers Spike Jonze, Darren Aronofsky, or his leading actors from Godfather Al Pacino and Andy Garcia, as well as Cailee Spaeny, the lead actress in her daughter Sofia Coppola's latest film, Priscilla.

The least we can say is that this work left no one indifferent!

“It’s cinema that thinks big, written for example World of Real. Which engages the public enormously. It asks you to dig in: it's a consistently entertaining film that's visually impressive and demands constant attention from the viewer. You must follow him.

(…)

It is surprising. Very visual, it recalls the experimental cinema of the 1960s. As if Francis was recounting his youth at the age of 80. It’s his vision of the independent cinema he grew up with. A wonderful film, bigger than life, which jumps out at you and is at the same time incredibly personal. Adam Driver here IS Francis. This film is unlike anything else out there. He is avant-garde, innovative.”

The journalist present for Deadline was just as surprised by this work “whose ideas flow, which deals with both the past and the future, in the form of a visual and epic fable, which works wonders on an IMAX screen. The filmmaker covers multiple complex themes over 2 hours and 13 minutes, which is remarkably concise – not to mention its end credits. (…) The conflict at the heart of the story could not be more apropos in this election year, at a time when polarization is extreme and disinformation has become a tactic widely developed policy.”

The American site delivers by the way a first synopsis :

“The destruction of a city the size of New York after an accident imposes two divergent visions of the future. On the one hand, there is Caesar, an ambitious architect (Adam Driver). On the other, his enemy the Mayor Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). Their debate is linked to the way in which we could rebuild the city for the future: with renewable materials? Or via a business as corrupt as those that were put in place previously? In the middle of this conflict, there is also the mayor's own daughter, Julia, a fearless young woman who grew up in this world of power and who is looking for meaning in her life.”

Laurence Fishburne completes the cast, as narrator, and there is also Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Chloe Fineman, Kathryn Hunter, Talia Shire, Dustin Hoffman, DB, Sweeney, Jason Schwartzman…

Remember that Francis Ford Coppola himself invested $120 million to be able to turn Megalopolis as he wanted, without the pressure of a studio. This project has been close to his heart for several decades: the first time he spoke about it in the press was at the very beginning of the 1980s, when he was preparing Outsiders. He is now looking for a distributor to ensure his promotion and a resounding theatrical release. World of Real writes on this subject that Focus Features or Neon “would be perfect for this particular film”because “Particular care will have to be taken in the way it is presented to the public. It is not a film that follows the usual rules of storytelling, it follows its own path.”

Taking the stage to accompany the 84-year-old filmmaker, Andy Garcia told the first audience to Megalopolis : “This man is the reason we all make movies.” Very moved, Francis Ford Coppola would then have received this warm welcome “on the verge of tears”. He also confirmed that the version shown in preview was directly his “director's cut”which he no longer intended to retouch his film.

Met backstage by Deadlinehe also assured the American journalist that he did not intend to end his career as a director with Megalopolis :

“I knew that Megalopolis was finished when I started working on my next film. It will not be achievable at low cost, far from it, but I don't think we can talk about 'epic film' for this one.”

But still ? Shh… Coppola is saying no more for the moment. It is still rumored that as soon as he has signed with a distributor for Megalopolishe would be ready to reveal it to the public of the next Cannes Film Festival. Will it cause as much sensation as with Apocalypse Now in 1979?

When Premiere told The Apocalypse by Francis Ford Coppola