Coppola, Francis Ford

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    Will Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” Flop?

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    Mr. Coppola has spent $120 million on his new movie, “Megalopolis.” Most box office analysts predict that he’ll get far less in return.Lionsgate executives say they have done all they can. They’ve booked 1,700 theaters, deployed guerrilla marketers to college campuses and pushed to flip negative reviews to their advantage. They have tied the film’s themes to the presidential race in TV ads.And now it is up to moviegoers. Will people plunk down dollars and turn Francis Ford Coppola’s majestically bonkers “Megalopolis” into an against-all-odds success when it arrives on Friday?Or will the $120 million epic — in keeping with months of negative prerelease headlines — go down as a hall-of-fame flop?Most box office analysts are predicting disaster. “Megalopolis” could arrive to as little as $5 million in weekend ticket sales in North America, according to surveys that track audience interest. Ticket sales are split roughly 50-50 with theater owners.But there are glimmers of hope. The film received a 10-minute standing ovation when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. On Monday, Lionsgate, which is distributing and marketing “Megalopolis” for a fee, staged a preview at IMAX theaters across the country, selling out locations in New York, California, Massachusetts, Utah and Florida. The stunt was an effort to position what is essentially a big-budget art film as a broad-audience blockbuster.“We want everyone to come,” Mr. Coppola, 85, said during a Q. and A. that was part of the IMAX event, clasping his hands together in simulated prayer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Megalopolis’ Director Says He Has No Regrets About $120 Million Film

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      At a Cannes news conference that ignored recent allegations, the director said he was already writing his next film.At the Cannes Film Festival news conference on Friday for his new film, “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola entered holding hands with his granddaughters.“When I came here for ‘Apocalypse Now,’ I had Sofia on my shoulder,” Coppola said of his daughter, who also became a director.That trip to Cannes took place 45 years ago and ended with a major laurel, as “Apocalypse Now” won Coppola the Palme d’Or. It’s anyone’s guess how the new film will fare, since “Megalopolis” premiered at Cannes on Thursday night to wildly mixed reviews and has yet to score a distributor.A futuristic melodrama about a visionary architect (played by Adam Driver), “Megalopolis” is the first film in 13 years from the 85-year-old Coppola, best known for directing the “Godfather” trilogy. But on the dais at Cannes, he was eager to share credit for the movie with his cast, which also includes Aubrey Plaza, Nathalie Emmanuel and Giancarlo Esposito.“We made it together — I didn’t make the film,” Coppola insisted. “When you make a film like this, I didn’t know how to do it, let’s face it. The movie makes itself.”The news conference started 20 minutes late, limiting the number of questions that could be posed, and none of the journalists who were called on asked Coppola about a recent report in The Guardian in which anonymous sources described a chaotic “Megalopolis” shoot and alleged that Coppola tried to kiss some of the female extras featured in a nightclub scene. (Executive co-producer Darren Demetre has said he was unaware of any harassment complaints made during the production, but acknowledged that Coppola gave “kind hugs and kisses on the cheek to the cast and background players.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Megalopolis’ Premieres at Cannes: First Reaction

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      Francis Ford Coppola’s first movie in more than a decade reveals a filmmaker not content to rest on his laurels.Late in “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s plaintively hopeful movie about — well, everything under the sun — a character speaks to the power of love. It’s a wistful moment in a fascinating film aswirl with wild visions, lofty ideals, cinematic allusions, literary references, historical footnotes and self-reflexive asides, all of which Coppola has funneled into a fairly straightforward story about a man with a plan. It is a great big plan from a great big man in a great big movie, one whose sincerity is finally as moving as its unbounded artistic ambition.“Megalopolis,” which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, is Coppola’s first movie since “Twixt” (2011), a little-seen, small-scale horror fantasy. “Megalopolis” is far larger in every respect, though at this point it’s an open question whether it will reach an audience of any kind. The industry, never a welcoming place for free-ranging and -thinking artists, is in the midst of another of its cyclical freakouts. Business is terrible and the sky is definitely, absolutely falling. Fear, panic and timidity rule the day, as they generally do.And then there is a recent report in The Guardian with anonymous sources alleging that Coppola tried to kiss female extras. The executive producer Darren Demetre has said, “I was never aware of any complaints of harassment or ill behavior during the course of the project” and described the contact as “kind hugs and kisses on the cheek to the cast and background players.”I thought about these allegations every so often while watching “Megalopolis,” particularly during one of the bacchanals that punctuate the story and especially when yet another semi-covered breast waggled onscreen. I didn’t find the breasts scandalous or remotely offensive; for one thing, the movie is a speculative fiction about a city that more or less looks like New York, if one modeled on ancient Rome. There the city’s wealthy citizens scheme, the poor suffer and a visionary architect, Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), dreams of a “perfect school-city” in which everyone can become who they were meant to be.The movie follows Catilina pondering his mortality atop what looks like the Chrysler Building. After gingerly crawling outside on a ledge, he gazes over the city and raises a foot in the air, then freezes as if contemplating the abyss. This apparent to-be-or-not-to-be moment initiates a story that finds him wrestling with imponderables, having anguished meltdowns and trying to realize his utopian project using a building material he has invented as he navigates assorted hurdles. Among the most persistent is the imperious mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who has a beautiful daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), a party girl who can quote the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius by heart.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Eleanor Coppola, Who Chronicled Her Family’s Filmmaking, Dies at 87

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      She made documentaries of her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and her daughter Sofia Coppola’s “The Virgin Suicides” and recalled their lives in books.Eleanor Coppola, a documentary filmmaker and artist who called herself “an observer at heart,” a description borne out through works chronicling the cinematic triumphs and ordeals of her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, and their daughter, Sofia Coppola, died on Friday at her home in Rutherford, Calif. She was 87.Her family announced her death in a statement, which did not state a cause.Ms. Coppola’s career as a documentarian began when her husband asked her to record the production of “Apocalypse Now,” his 1979 exegesis of the Vietnam War that took so long to make, some began calling it “Apocalypse Never.” By then Mr. Coppola was Hollywood royalty on the strength of his first two “Godfather” movies. But with “Apocalypse Now,” he stumbled.He came close to going broke as the movie, its roots in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” ran way over budget and over schedule. Filming was slowed by steady rains on location in the Philippines, which served as a stand-in for Vietnam. A typhoon destroyed movie sets. Major parts of the script were written on the fly. Marlon Brando was overweight and underprepared for his role as a deranged Green Berets colonel. To top it all off, the film’s principal actor, Martin Sheen, had a heart attack during the shooting.As for the Coppolas, they careened toward divorce, a marital collapse set in motion largely by his sexual infidelities and frequent tantrums on and off the movie set. “My greatest fear,” his wife captured him on tape as saying, “is to make a really pompous film on an important subject, and I am making it.”Ms. Coppola had her own lapses. “If I tell the truth, we both strayed from our marriage, probably equally, each in our way,” she wrote in “Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now,” a 1979 account of that period. “Francis has gone to the extremes in the physical world, women, food, possessions, in an effort to feel complete. I have looked for that feeling of completeness in the non‐physical world. Zen, est, Esalen, meditation.”Ms. Coppola with her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, in 2022. They had a trying marriage but remained together. Hunter Abrams for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More