MOVIE NEWS – Francis Ford Coppola continues to cast his dream project Megalopolis – the latest star to join the cast could be Shia LaBeouf.

Shia LaBeouf is the latest star to join Francis Ford Coppola’s $100 million Megalopolis, THR reports. Even the legendary filmmaker took a long time to get the production underway, and the cast has been growing steadily ever since. Coppola’s film has been in the works for a long time, first conceived during Apocalypse Now, and the original script was written around 2001, but the project was put on hold by the September 11 attacks.

It looks like Coppola’s film is rising up like a phoenix, and very loudly at that.

Coppola revealed at the end of 2021 that he was almost ready to start shooting the film, and given that he mentioned a date of autumn 2022, it seems he is still on track, even if he has to finance the entire movie himself. Unlike a big franchise film or an adaptation of a best-selling novel, Megalopolis is not billed as a “summer blockbuster”, and despite its huge star cast, it would be hard to find a studio willing to risk $100 million on such a film at this stage.

Shia LaBeouf is the latest name to be attached to the project, alongside Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Jason Schwartzman, Grace Vanderwaal, Kathryn Hunter and James Remar. James Caan was initially set to star in the film, but he sadly passed away in July.

Despite an unresolved potential court case involving his former partner FKA Twigs, Coppola seems to have no problem casting the former Megalopolis star in the film.

No word yet on exactly when Coppola will start shooting and when the master’s highly anticipated film will finally arrive in cinemas, but Shia LaBeouf is likely to be on set. Although the director has made several attempts to get the project to the screen in the past, his recent comments that he “doesn’t care” about the financial impact of the film as he is spending his own money on it suggest that he is determined that there will be no further delays in the filming of Megalopolis this time around.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter