New Delhi: Celebrated American filmmaker-producer Francis Ford Coppola will be presenting his upcoming film ‘Megalopolis’ at the upcoming 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. The film will be competing under the Festival’s top category, Palme d’Or.
The ‘Godfather’ fame filmmaker will be returning to the French Riviera 45 years after he presented ‘Apocalypse Now’. The film won the top prize, which he shared with Volker Schlöndorff’s ‘Die Blechtrommel’. Coppola had previously won the Palme d’Or for ‘The Conversation’ five years before the ‘Apocalypse Now’ win.
On May 17, Megalopolis will be screened at the grand gala at Cannes 2024.
About Megalopolis
‘Megalopolis’ is a grand project. Coppola himself funded the film after selling a large part of his wine estate. The film’s budget cost some $120 million.
The film is a passion project of Coppola. Over the years, ‘Megalopolis’ had been announced, abondoned and delayed many times. There were also reports about some footage being shot and left.
Coppola could have a great opportunity to close deals in Cannes with the hordes of buyers that will be swarming the Festival Market, one of the biggest in the world.
In the past few weeks, Coppola is said to have shown his work to possible Hollywood purchasers. Ted Sarandos of Netflix, Donna Langley of Universal, and Tom Rothman of Sony attended the event.
However, no official news has come about any collaboration and the conflicting opinions around the film are concerning.
A Guradian report mentioned that ‘Megalopolis’ had been a difficult film to shoot. The report said, “It has long been considered a difficult beast to film: an epic that spans ancient history and a cataclysmic future, riddled with esoterica and tortuous concepts” Megalopolis’ official logline describes it as a “story of political ambition, genius and conflicted love” where “the fate of Rome haunts a modern world unable to solve its own social problems”.
Megalopolist cast & plot
‘Megalopolis’ stars Dustin Hoffman, Giancarlo Esposito, Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Chloe Fineman, Voight, Laurence Fishburne, and Kathryn Hunter.
The film revolves around the reconstruction of a city that was unintentionally destroyed. There are two schools of thought regarding how to approach it: the pragmatic mayor of the city (Giancario Esposito) and the idealist architect (Adam Driver).
The two guys, each driven to promote his own plan and see it through to completion, collide ideas in the following exchange.