Francis Ford Coppola’s highly anticipated film, Megalopolis, finally has a release date. Lionsgate Studios has officially acquired the distribution rights for the film, which will hit U.S. theaters and IMAX screens on September 27, 2024.
Adam Fogelson of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group expressed his excitement, stating, “Francis is a legend. His contributions to cinema have inspired many of us to pursue careers in film. It is a true privilege to work with him and bring this incredible, audacious, and utterly unique movie to theatrical audiences. At Lionsgate, we strive to be a home for bold and daring artists, and Megalopolis proves there is no one more bold or daring than the maestro, Francis Ford Coppola.”
Coppola himself shared his enthusiasm, saying, “One rule of business I’ve always followed and prioritized is to continue working with companies and teams who have proven to be good friends and great collaborators. This is why I am thrilled to have Adam Fogelson and Lionsgate Studios release Megalopolis. I am confident they will apply the same tender love and care given to Apocalypse Now, which is currently in its 45th year of astounding revenue and appreciation.”
Megalopolis boasts an impressive cast, including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney, and Dustin Hoffman.
The film is described as a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina, a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero, the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.
Megalopolis premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival this past May, where it received mixed reviews from critics. Coppola invested around $120 million of his own money to fund the film.
Buzz continues to grow for Megalopolis, the decades-in-the-making movie from director Francis Ford Coppola. The movie, which the 85-year-old director funded himself, has finally found a U.S. distributor. With first-look photos released earlier this week, as well as today’s trailer, its fortunes might soon change. According to Coppola, the $120 million epic will be offered up to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival, where it will officially premiere in competition on May 16.
The movie boasts a vast cast that includes Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito, Shia LaBeouf, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, and Laurence Fishburne. What it’s about is far harder to quantify. Writing to Vanity Fair, the director cited H.G. Wells, the September 11 attacks, and a 63 BC battle between Roman politician Cicero and an insurrectionist named Catiline.
Adam Driver and Nathalie Emmanuel appear in the first official image from Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. The story takes place in a somewhat stylized New York City, portrayed as the center of the power of the world, and Cicero would be the mayor during a time of great financial upheaval, such as the financial crisis under former Mayor Dinkins. Cesar, in turn, would be a master builder, a great architect, designer, and scientist combining elements of Robert Moses, as portrayed in the brilliant biography The Power Broker, with architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Raymond Loewy, Norman Bel Geddes, or Walter Gropius.
We don’t see any of that in the clip, which shows a black-clad Driver stepping off the edge of a domed skyscraper and then seemingly stopping time. Those who attended an April screening in Los Angeles might have more insight into how the teaser might play into the final film, in which Driver’s character—an architect intent on rebuilding a ruined city—goes up against a corrupt mayor (Esposito) who prefers the status quo.
The project, which Coppola first began writing in 1983, cost a reported $120 million to make—funded in part by the sale of a significant portion of his wine empire. Clocking in at two hours and 15 minutes, the film follows the rebuilding of a metropolis after its accidental destruction, with two competing visions—one from an idealist architect (Adam Driver), the other from its pragmatist mayor (Giancarlo Esposito)—clashing in the process. References to ancient Rome—including Caesar haircuts on the men—abound.
Coppola, 84, had hoped to announce a festival bow once a distribution plan was in place, but on April 9 revealed the film would premiere at Cannes on May 17. But while there was no shortage of curious suitors there, multiple sources inside the screening tell The Hollywood Reporter that Megalopolis will face a steep uphill battle to find a distribution partner. Says one distributor: “There is just no way to position this movie.”
“Everyone is rooting for Francis and feels nostalgic,” adds another attendee. “But then there is the business side of things.”
A third attendee noted “a conspicuous silence at the end of it,” but stopped short of writing off the film as a failed exercise. “Does it wobble, wander, go all over the place? Yes. But it’s really imaginative and does say something about our time. I think it’s going to be a small, specialized label that picks it up.”
But a boutique label like A24 or Neon would likely not have the budget for the grand marketing push Coppola has envisioned. One source tells THR that Coppola assumed he would make a deal very quickly, and that a studio would happily commit to a massive P&A spend in the vicinity of $40 million domestically, and $80 million to $100 million globally.
That kind of big-stakes rollout would make Megalopolis a better fit for a studio-backed specialty label like the Disney-owned Searchlight or the Universal-owned Focus. But Universal and Focus have already tapped out of the bidding, sources tell THR.
“I find it hard to believe any distributor would put up cash money and stay in first position to recoup the P&A as well as their distribution fee,” says a distribution veteran. “If Coppola is willing to put up the P&A or backstop the spend, I think there would be a lot more interested parties.”
Since Coppola was always keen for this to be an IMAX release, there was a small screening at the company’s Playa Vista headquarters in Los Angeles prior to the buyer’s event. While Megalopolis isn’t a “Filmed for IMAX” movie, Coppola did use camera technology that would allow him to shoot certain sequences that would fill an entire IMAX screen, and worked with the company’s chief quality experts David and Patricia Keighley, who advise filmmakers.
IMAX is likely to give the film some support if it gets distribution, sources close to the project say. Like others, however, IMAX expected the film to be far more commercial, sources add.
Following the muted response to the March 28 screening, it’s now not even clear if a studio would agree to a negative pickup deal, in which the studio would buy the film outright, or one in which it would distribute the film for a fee. One studio head in attendance described it as “some kind of indie experiment” that might find a home at a streamer.
Most of those who spoke to THR describe a film that is an enormously hard sell to a wide audience. Two people say it’s hard to figure out who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. The big exception is LaBeouf, who they say is the best thing about the film (he’s one of the antagonists).
Several have mentioned an especially cringey sequence involving Jon Voight’s character in bed with what looks like a huge erection; the scene evidently takes quite the turn, but we will not spoil it here.
Not everyone was turned off. “I liked it enormously,” says one specialty label founder, who describes Megalopolis as a “very big film” that “has a real life. How do you define commercial? You look at a movie like Blade Runner and it became so much more commercial than on opening weekend.” Despite the vote of confidence, Megalopolis won’t find a home at his studio: “It takes time to find the right match,” he says.
Another studio head, however, was far less charitable in his assessment: “It’s so not good, and it was so sad watching it. Anybody who puts P&A behind it, you’re going to lose money. This is not how Coppola should end his directing career.”
Francis Ford Coppola’s sci-fi epic Megalopolis, which proved to be wildly divisive after its Cannes Film Festival premiere, has finally found a distributor. Lionsgate has signed a deal to distribute the film in theaters in the U.S. and Canada.
It will be released on Sept. 27. Megalopolis is playing in IMAX, but it will likely share screens with Christopher Nolan’s 10th anniversary Interstellar rerelease. It will also have to relinquish those coveted premium large format screens a week later, as Joker: Folie à Deux, which was filmed with IMAX cameras, lands on Oct. 4.
“Francis is a legend. For many of us, his gifts to cinema were one of the inspirations to devote our own careers to film,” Adam Fogelson, chair of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, said in a statement. “It is a true privilege to work with him, and to bring this incredible, audacious, and utterly unique movie to theatrical audiences. At Lionsgate, we strive to be a home for bold and daring artists, and Megalopolis proves there is no one more bold or daring than the maestro, Francis Ford Coppola.”
Through a head-spinning number of separate deals, the two-hour-and-20 minute dystopian drama has previously found distribution in the U.K. (Entertainment Film Distributors Limited), France (Le Pacte), Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Constantin Film), Italy (Eagle Pictures), Spain (Tripictures), Australia (Madman Entertainment), Greece (Feelgood Entertainment) and more. Goodfellas is in advanced negotiations for Latin America and Brazil, and in negotiations with the rest of Asia.
Coppola has a lot riding on Megalopolis, which the 85-year-old Godfather director ended up independently financing for $120 million. Adam Driver stars in the film as an architect who accidentally destroys a New York City-esque metropolis and works to rebuild it as a sustainable utopia. In the process, he’s challenged by the corrupt mayor (Giancarlo Esposito), who wants to stick to the status quo, as the bureaucrat’s daughter (Nathalie Emmanuel) comes between the two men. Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight and Laurence Fishburne round out the cast.
Lionsgate has previously distributed many of the filmmaker’s prior films on home entertainment, including Apocalypse Now Final Cut, The Conversation and The Cotton Club Encore. Lionsgate Studios will also distribute Megalopolis across all home entertainment platforms.
“One rule of business I’ve always followed and prioritized is to continue working with companies and teams who over time have proven to be good friends as well as great collaborators,” Coppola said in a statement. “This is why I am thrilled to have Adam Fogelson and Lionsgate Studios release Megalopolis. I am confident they will apply the same tender love and care given to Apocalypse Now, which is currently in its 45th year of astounding revenue and appreciation.”
Coppola’s producer and longtime lawyer, Barry Hirsch of Hirsch Wallerstein Hayum Matlof + Fishman, oversaw the deal on behalf of American Zoetrope. Lauren Bixby and Christopher Davis oversaw the deal for Lionsgate.
IndieWire first reported news of the sale.
