Vanity Fair has revealed the first look at Megalopolis, the upcoming sci-fi epic and passion project from Oscar-winner Francis Ford Coppola.
The image features Adam Driver as Caesar, “the idealistic architect and artist planning to rebuild a city that has fallen to ruins.” Standing behind Driver is Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia Cicero, the “socialite daughter of his nemesis, a corrupt mayor (Giancarlo Esposito), who likes his municipal kingdom the way it is.” Julia is caught between her loyalty to her father and her love for Caesar.
View the first look at Megalopolis below.
Who is Involved in Megalopolis?
Megalopolis’ ensemble also stars Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman, Shia LaBeouf, Laurence Fishburne, Grace VanderWaal, Kathryn Hunter, James Remar, Talia Shire, and Jason Schwartzman. Shire is Coppola’s daughter, while Schwartzman’s is Coppola’s nephew.
“I wasn’t really working on this screenplay for 40 years as I often see written, but rather I was collecting notes and clippings for a scrapbook of things I found interesting for some future screenplay, or examples of political cartoons or different historical subjects,” Coppola said in a statement to Vanity Fair. “Ultimately, after a lot of time, I settled on the idea of a Roman epic. And then later, a Roman epic set in modern America, so I really only began writing this script, on and off, in the last dozen years or so.”
Coppola, who self-financed the $120 million budget, is still looking for a distributor. Coppola screened Megalopolis last month, with major studio representatives in attendance. However, the reaction to the film was divisive, with one distributor saying, “There is just no way to position this movie.”
Coppola will try to find a distributor at Megalopolis’ world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
