Francis Ford Coppola's MEGALOPOLIS Film Production is "Absolute Madness" With Production and Budget Issues

Director Francis Ford Coppola has been in production on his feature film epic Megalopolis for a few months now, and a new report has surfaced saying the production is a complete mess and “absolute madness.”

Coppola has been looking to make this movie since the early ‘80s, and he was so passionate about it that he decided to self-finance the $120 million to make it. But, with the way things are going, it sounds like that budget is going to balloon!

The movie is halfway through shooting and according to The Hollywood Reporter, Coppola fired the entire visual effects department before the holidays, and the film’s production designer Beth Mickle and supervising art director David Scott have also left the department, which means the entire art department for the film is gone. This is an effects-heavy film, so you need that department! That’s just crazy that it’s completely gone! Sources say that Coppola is in the process of hiring new staff this week.

The Art Directors Guild said in a statement: "The Art Directors Guild supports all Art Departments to ensure proper staffing and scheduling and is currently looking into the situation with Megalopolis to determine the next steps. We have no further comment at this point."

One talent representative whose client was fired says the firing was a blessing in disguise. The source said, “It was absolute madness, being on set.”

As for the ballooning costs to finish the movie, a production executive says, “There’s no good answer here. [Coppola] is going to spend a lot more money than he intended. You can imagine how much he’s already got invested. It would be a very bitter pill not to finish it.”

This project has been a passion project for Coppola for almost 40 years, it would be insane if he didn’t finish it. But $120 million is a lot of money for a movie, especially when he’s financing it himself! I can’t help but think Coppola has reached out to his filmmaking friends George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and maybe others for advice and help.

In the end, I hope the movie turns out great and they is was worth the madness.

The film tells the story of an architect dreaming of a utopian version of New York City in the near future and his battle with the conservative mayor, who has other ideas about the city. Contained within the epic is a myriad of storylines and characters. “The fate of Rome haunts a modern world unable to solve its own social problems in this epic story of political ambition.”

Coppola also described the film as “a love story. A woman is divided between loyalties to two men. But not only two men. Each man comes with a philosophical principle. One is her father who raised her, who taught her Latin on his lap and is devoted to a much more classical view of society, the Marcus Aurelius kind of view. The other one, who is the lover, is the enemy of the father but is dedicated to a much more progressive ‘Let’s leap into the future, let’s leap over all of this garbage that has contaminated humanity for 10,000 years. Let’s find what we really are, which are an enlightened, friendly, joyous species.’”

Coppola also previously said of the film:

“What would make me really happy? It's not winning a lot of Oscars because I already have a lot and maybe more than I deserve. And it's not that I make a lot of money, although I think over time it will make a lot of money because anything that the people keep looking at and finding new things, that makes money. So somewhere down the line, way after I'm gone, all I want is for them to discuss [Megalopolis] and, is the society we're living in the only one available to us? How can we make it better? Education, mental health? What the movie really is proposing is that utopia is not a place. It's how can we make everything better? Every year, come up with two, three or four ideas that make it better."

"I would be smiling in my grave if I thought something like that happened, because people talk about what movies really mean if you give them something. If you encouraged people to discuss marriage and education and health and justice and opportunities and freedom and all these wonderful things that human beings have conceived of. And ask the question, how can we make it even better? That would be great. Because I bet you they would make it better if they had that conversation."

The movie stars Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Schwartzman, Laurence Fishburne, Grace VanderWaal, Kathryn Hunter, James Remar, Talia Shire, Dustin Hoffman, Chloe Fineman (Saturday Night Live), Isabelle Kusman (Licorice Pizza), D.B. Sweeney (Fire in the Sky), and newcomer Bailey Ives.