Megalopolis is in London cinemas this weekend, 40 years after director Francis Ford Coppola first began work on it.
The passion project casts Marriage Story star Adam Driver and The White Lotus’s Aubrey Plaza among others, and was part-funded by the legendary director himself after several setbacks over the decades meant few distributors were willing to touch the film.
The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and it received mixed reviews. In addition, allegations have come to light from the film’s cast about the director’s on-set behaviour.
Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about Coppola’s latest release.
What is Megalopolis about?
Set in the futuristic metropolis of New Rome, the film revolves around the rebuilding of the city after a disaster wrecked its infrastructure.
Using a magical material called Megalon, architect Cesar Catilina (Driver) can control space and time and is permitted to rebuild the city into a sustainable paradise by the city’s government.
However, his enemy – the mayor of New Rome (Giancarlo Esposito) – wants to keep things the way they are, and the two battle over control over the city, with the mayor’s daughter (and Cesar’s love interest) finding herself caught in the middle.
Quoted as describing Megalopolis as his “dream script”, Coppola tackles themes including politics, philosophy, race and love in the film.
How long is Megalopolis?
The film is two hours and 18 minutes long and is rated 15 for nudity, sexual content, drug use, explicit language and violence.
Who is in the Megalopolis cast?
Megalopolis’s cast includes an array of Hollywood’s A-listers: Adam Driver stars as Cesar Catilina alongside Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito, who plays New Rome’s mayor, Franklyn Cicero.
Game of Thrones star Nathalie Emmanuel appears as Driver’s love interest, while Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Kathryn Hunter and Dustin Hoffman appear in supporting roles. The Matrix star Laurence Fishburne narrates the film.
Why has the production and release of Megalopolis been so controversial?
The lead-up to the film’s release hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing, with a host of creative differences plaguing the film’s production.
While Coppola’s allegedly old-school, scattered and time-consuming approach was praised by the likes of Plaza, it irritated others. In December 2022, the director fired the majority of the film’s visual effects team.
Other crew members, including the entire art department, exited production of the film due to what they called an “unstable filming environment”.
More controversy soon followed: in February, several anonymous crew members came forward to allege that Coppola’s on-set behaviour was inappropriate. During the filming of one scene, it is alleged that the director pulled female extras to sit on his lap, kissing them to “get them in the mood”, as well as allegedly making sexually suggestive comments.
The film’s executive producer Darren Demetre quickly batted away the accusations, saying that Coppola was establishing “the spirit of the scene by giving kind hugs and kisses on the cheek to the cast and background players”.
After videos surfaced of the encounters, extra Lauren Pagone told Variety that her interaction with Coppola left her feeling shocked. “I didn’t expect him to kiss and hug me like that. I was caught off guard,” she said.
Earlier this month, Pagone filed a lawsuit against Coppola, his production company, American Zoetrope, and two of the casting agencies that worked on the film’s production, for civil assault, civil battery and failure to prevent sexual harassment.
Coppola has since sued Variety, seeking $15 million in damages for the publication’s articles about his alleged behaviour.
What have the reviews of Megalopolis been like so far?
Reviews of the film have been mixed.
“If you love Francis Ford Coppola give this tawdry mess a miss,” wrote Jo-Ann Titmarsh in her one star review for the Standard.
On film site Rotten Tomatoes, half the critic reviews featured were positive.
“More of a creative manifesto than a cogent narrative feature, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is an overstuffed opus that’s equal parts stimulating and slapdash,” the site’s critics consensus reads. As it stands, the film scored one of Driver’s lowest ratings on the site.
What other films have taken a long time to be made?
Also starring Driver, 2018 adventure comedy The Man Who Killed Don Quixote took a staggering 29 years to be made, after the film – directed by Monty Python legend Terry Gilliam – faced several setbacks and controversies during its creation.
A number of animated films have also been very slow to reach the screen. Production of Avatar: The Way of Water took 13 years (the follow-up, Avatar: Fire and Ash, will have taken 16 years when it is released in December), while 1959 Disney classic Sleeping Beauty took seven years to complete.
Megalopolis isn’t Coppola’s only time-consuming production. His 1979 war film, Apocalypse Now, faced a number of setbacks since starting production three years before, including its sets being destroyed by extreme weather, Marlon Brando’s unpreparedness on set and Martin Sheen having a nearly fatal heart attack while filming. A documentary was made exploring the film’s production mishaps in 1991.
