MOVIE NEWS – Filming on Francis Ford Coppola’s dream project, Megalopolis, will begin this autumn.

Francis Ford Coppola has announced the cast of Megalopolis, a film more than two decades in the making. Megalopolis will star Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne and Jon Voight. The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola was forced to sell part of his winery to finance his dream project. The budget was set at just under $100 million. Coppola wrote the script and will direct the feature film, which is set in a utopian version of New York.

Megalopolis is set in the aftermath of a horrific disaster and will have a very complex narrative. In a recent interview with GQ magazine journalist Zach Baron, Coppola explained the plot of the film as follows:

“It’s 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 said in the interview.

Coppola became a sought-after director after the release of The Godfather in 1972. He won five Academy Awards for The Godfather, The Godfather II and Patton, and numerous other awards, including the British Film Academy Award for Apocalypse Now and six Golden Globes for American Graffiti, Apocalypse Now and The Godfather.

Coppola has undoubtedly assembled a team of greats for his upcoming film Megalopolis.

Driver most recently appeared in The House of Gucci as Maurizio Gucci. The Oscar- and Emmy-nominated actor was a regular on HBO’s Girls and played Ben Solo/Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Driver’s upcoming projects include White Noise, 65 and Ferrari, where he will star as Enzo Ferrari.

Emmanuel, a famous theatre actress, best known for her portrayal of Missandei in HBO’s Game of Thrones, joined the Fast and The Furious franchise in 2012 as Ramsey. She recently finished filming the horror film The Bride.

Fishburne has worked with the iconic director since the age of 14. In Apocalypse Now, he played 17-year-old Tyrone Miller. It was later revealed that Fishburne had lied about his age to get a role in the film. In 2023, he will star in John Wick: Chapter 4 with fellow Matrix star Keanu Reeves.

Whitaker is a legendary actor of many talents, winning several awards for his work in 2006’s The Last of King of Scotland, including the Academy Award for Best Actor. He will next play boxing trainer Doc Broadus in Heart of a Lion, a biopic about George Foreman.

Jon Voight became a well-known actor in the late 1960s after his starring role in Midnight Cowboy. Since then, he has continued to work in film and television and has won several awards for his work in Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home, Runaway Train and Ray Donovan.

Filming on Megalopolis is scheduled to begin this autumn.

Source: CQ