Francis Ford Coppola's New Movie Highlights Hollywood's Franchise Problem
Francis Ford Coppola’s next project is Megalopolis, and the way it’s getting made highlights Hollywood’s current franchise problem. Few names in the film industry have gained the respect and admiration that Francis Ford Coppola has. The director, writer, and producer has been making movies for over five decades, starting in 1963 with the black-and-white horror-thriller Dementia 13. After a couple more projects as director and writer, for which he received a lot of praise, his biggest project arrived in 1972: The Godfather, based on Mario Puzzo’s novel of the same name.
Coppola’s take on The Godfather is credited as the one that revolutionized the gangster genre and is still regarded as one of the greatest movies ever, and it also earned him a place as one of the most influential filmmakers in history. Coppola’s filmmaking career continued with The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, Rumble Fish, The Godfather Part III, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, among many other projects. After the release of The Rainmaker in 1997, Coppola took a decade-long break from directing, though continued working as a producer, and returned in 2007 with the fantasy drama Youth Without Youth. His most recent film project was the horror movie Twixt, released in 2011, and he’s now ready to helm a big production movie again with Megalopolis.
Speaking to Deadline, Coppola shared his plans for Megalopolis, explaining that he’s committed to making it happen and would like to “make it in the fall of 2022”. Megalopolis would be a big production with a high-profile cast and an elevated budget to fit Coppola’s vision. Although no actors are officially on board yet, Coppola is reportedly in talks with Oscar Isaac, Forest Whitaker, Cate Blanchett, Jon Voight, Zendaya, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Jessica Lange to join Megalopolis, but what’s important about this project, and what highlights a current issue in Hollywood, is the budget of Coppola’s project and how he’s looking to self-finance in order to make his dream movie.
According to Coppola, Megalopolis will cost between $100 million and $120 million, saying he will put his own money into it and is also prepared to “match outside financing, almost dollar for dollar”. It’s worth noting that Coppola has been trying to make Megalopolis happen for years now, which only makes one Hollywood problem even bigger: how studios will finance franchises or big IPs over projects that don’t fit that criterion. The entertainment industry has been making a fortune in recent years with franchises, shared universes, and adaptations of popular books, video games, and more, and while that’s not bad as they ultimately serve the purpose of entertaining the audience, studios have chosen to give all their resources and attention to them, leaving filmmakers and their more personal, non-franchise-potential projects on their own.
Megalopolis is being described by Coppola as a Roman epic “in the traditional Cecile B. DeMille or Ben-Hur way” but told as “a modern counterpart focusing on America”, so with that in mind, it’s not surprising that the budget is so high, but it is shocking (to an extent) that Coppola, with all the experience he has and the weight that his name has in the industry, hasn’t gotten the support he needs to make it happen. Surely, Francis Ford Coppola will find a way to finally bring Megalopolis to life, while studios continue giving all they have to projects with the potential of spawning franchises or with characters the audience already knows a bit too well.