With Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-in-development passion project Megalopolis recently wrapped after a smooth production, there’s been some speculation that the $100 million epic––starring Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Chloe Fineman, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, DB Sweeney, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Bailey Ives, Grace Vanderwaal, James Remar, and Giancarlo Esposito––could see the light of day before the end of the year, but that won’t be the case.
As announced at Wondercon 2023, Popverse reports the Syzygy, the comics publisher, will be releasing a graphic novel tie-in for Megalopolis timed with its release in 2024. Coming from Syzygy co-founder Chris Ryall and artist Jacob Phillips, who were contacted by Coppola, they spent time on set developing this adaptation. “The exciting thing is that I’ve only worked directly with him on this,” Ryall said. “This isn’t the kind of thing where he licensed out the material — the movie and the book are solely his. We spent a few hours in Atlanta last month talking about not only this graphic novel but the childhood comics he loved, and all the way along, he’s been permissive and encouraging in telling us to make the book very much its own thing. So it’s been a kind of stunning arrangement, to get to work directly with someone of his stature on something like this.”
He adds, “And for me, as a huge fan of not only Jacob’s color work on the Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips graphic novels but certainly also the amazing art and colors on his That Texas Blood series, getting to work with Jacob while he’s on such a creative roll is also a thrill. Gonna be fun to build this particular corner of Francis’ new city.”
As for how one may actually get to see Megalopolis next year, Coppola is hoping for a major global theatrical release. “I’m interested in a theatrical release in theaters, and Imax theaters, and I am excited about the possibility that for the first time in history, a movie could open up on the same day everywhere in the world,” Coppola said back in January. “And that’s what my goal is.” While we await more specifics, check out the first tease of the title look below.
