The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly)
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA’S $120M+ FILM IN JEOPARDY AMID CREW EXODUS
Big Deal
Francis Ford Coppola’s latest movie, the sci-fi-tinged
Megalopolis, has descended into chaos, multiple sources tell THR. The film, halfway through shooting in Atlanta, has lost its entire visual effects team and other key talent including its production designer and supervising art director. To many insiders, it’s reminiscent of the infamous troubles that beset Apocalypse Now, and it’s one on which the iconoclastic director is breaking a cardinal Hollywood rule: Never spend your own money.
Megalopolis has been a passion project for the filmmaker, who turned heads in fall 2021 when news broke that he would be self-financing the
$120 million feature, partially with the tens of millions he made selling his popular Northern California wineries. The budget has since expanded, and the film is about halfway through its 80- to 90-day shoot, but a production source says it’s unclear whether it can go forward as planned.
Coppola, 83, assembled a starry cast for the project, including Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, family members Talia Shire and Jason Schwartzman, Shia LaBeouf and Dustin Hoffman. Sources say Coppola initially employed new virtual production technology similar to that used on The Mandalorian.
But as the challenges and costs of that approach have mounted, those sources say the production is attempting to pivot to a less costly, more traditional green-screen approach.
Sources say Coppola, who has never made an effects-heavy movie, fired most of the visual effects team Dec. 9, with the remainder soon following.
Mark Russell (In the Heights, The Wolf of Wall Street)
was serving as visual effects supervisor. Since then, production designer Beth Mickle and supervising art director David Scott have departed. (Coppola
famously fired his visual effects department on Bram Stoker’s Dracula 30 years ago.) Between firings and resignations, a source says, the film now has no art department. Russell, Mickle and Scott did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Coppola.
One talent rep whose client was among those fired says the dismissal was a blessing in disguise. “It was absolute madness, being on set,” this person says. Despite the crew exits, Coppola is pressing on and hiring new staff, according to sources.
The director has a long history of challenging productions. He self-financed the musical romance One From the Heart (1982), which failed to perform, and followed with The Cotton Club (1984), an all-star crime drama that also bombed.
However, no Coppola production was more famously calamitous than Apocalypse Now (1979), a grueling shoot that mirrored its plot of a descent into madness and chaos. Nevertheless, the movie went on to land two Oscars and became a classic. At that year’s Cannes Film Festival, the filmmaker reflected, “We were in the jungle. We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.”