Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola will self-finance the $120 million budget for his next film Megalopolis, which he believes may be his best work yet. For someone whose filmography boasts several of the greatest films in the history of American cinema, that’s saying something!
The Hollywood veteran decided to fund the project independently based on his past experiences in the film industry. Coppola senses the resistance he encounters to his vision for Megalopolis is similar to the pushback he met when he sought funding for the film Apocalypse Now in the late 1970s. He explained to GQ:
“I own Apocalypse Now. Do you know why I own Apocalypse Now? Because no one else wanted it. That was the case when I was 33 or whatever the age and I had won every award and had broken every record, and still, absolutely no one wanted to join me.”
He resolved the issue by bankrolling Apocalypse Now with $30 million of his own money. His wager paid off when the film raked in $92 million at the global box office and earned two Academy Awards.
The veteran filmmaker hopes that lightning will strike twice with Megalopolis, a story he came up with in the 1980s. Details about the plot are largely unclear. In previous interviews, Coppola disclosed that the story takes place in a utopia called New Rome, a futuristic rendition of New York City.
During its forty-year evolution, Megalopolis has evolved into “a love story that is also a philosophical investigation of the nature of man.” Forest Whitaker, Cate Blanchett, and Oscar Isaac are set to star in what may be Coppola’s magnum opus.
82-year-old Coppola says that his ambition is to create a film with a similar trajectory to It’s A Wonderful Life, a movie that can every year during the holidays and pondered for many years and generations to come.
