Cross your fingers so hard they break. Though reading about Megalopolis by now counts as some esoteric form of masochism, there is hope (more than two years since our last update) that Francis Ford Coppola might in fact move forward with his decades-stewing project—hope in the form of Oscar Isaac, James Caan, Zendaya, Cate Blanchett, Michelle Pfeiffer, Forest Whitaker, Jon Voight, and Jessica Lange, all of whom are (per Deadline) in conversation about joining the project for a fall 2022 shoot. Intrigued and inspired by that list? Let’s hope we have even one thing in common with tinseltown’s financiers.
Financiers who, reportedly, have to pony up between $100 and $120 million. Coppola would, of course, be one: Deadline tells us he’s “emboldened by the recent sale of a portion of his considerable vineyard holdings in Sonoma County to Delicato Family Wines” and, in his own words, is “prepared to match some outside financing, almost dollar for dollar.” Read just a bit closer and you’ll get why it’s some task. More than an epic of architecture, class struggle, and freedom on massive metropolitan scale—inspired by The Catiline Conspiracy, Issac as a “patrician” battling New York’s mayor (Whitaker), about which much more here—his ambition is a push against contemporary tendencies. Here I think it is worth presenting his quote in full:
“Pictures like this [are difficult]; everyone wants to make the next Marvel movie, but no one wants to make a picture that really talks to young people in a hopeful way, that we are in a position to get together and solve any problem thrown at us. That is what I believe, and it is what the theme of the picture really is. Utopia is talking about how we can make the society we live in solve these problems. I believe it is an exciting change from the kinds of movies being offered to the public. Mainly because it puts forward a fundamental message that it’s time for us to consider that the society we live in isn’t the only alternative available to us. And that utopia isn’t so much a little experimental place in the country; utopia is a discussion of people, asking the right questions on if the society we’re living in is the only alternative or, if for the sake of young people, there are better choices that should be discussed. That is the influence I dream of this movie having. And for that reason I am willing and capable of investing at a high number, to make it come true. I’m putting together the means of doing that.
This film I want to make, I believe is an exciting change from the kinds of movies being offered to the public. Mainly because it puts forward a fundamental message that it’s time for us to consider that the society we live in isn’t the only alternative available to us. And that a utopia isn’t so much a little experimental place in the country; a utopia is a discussion of people asking the right questions on just that subject, and if the society we’re living in is the only alternative or, if for the sake of young people, there are better choices that should be discussed. Hopefully that is the influence I dream of this movie having. And for that reason I am willing and capable of investing at a high number, to make it come true. I’m putting together the means of doing that.”