As Megalopolis looks to seek a U.S. distribution deal, pic’s filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola was asked to comment on the state of the film industry and whether the movie’s best destination is on streaming.
“Streaming is what we use to call home video,” was the director’s first response to the query.
However, the director’s hope is that the pic finds a home in “large theater with 600 to 700 people.”
“I feel the film industry is about people getting hired to meet debt obligations, their job isn’t to make good movies, but to pay their debit,” he said.
“These new companies –Amazon, Apple, Microsoft– they have plenty of money. But the studios that we know for so long, may not be here in the future,” Coppola wisely observed.
Commenting on the risk he took with his 40-year in the making, $120M production; he reflected on rolling the dice with investing in his Napa and Sonoma wineries. He took out a loan for $20M in the 1980s and “built a winery like Tivoli gardens with swimming pools, a place where the kids would go, then grandparents…I created a place that every winery tries to duplicate. I took the money from that, and I put the risk from that.”
He emphasized that Megalopolis will leave him with “no problems” financially and that his offspring Sophia and Roman “have wonderful careers without a fortune.”
Megalopolis secured distribution in five European countries as well as a limited Imax run. Dating for the film lies in whoever snaps up domestic. Coppola separately will sell streaming and TV on the feature apart from theatrical.
Megalopolis is billed as a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves. The pic is packed with an all-star casting including 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.
Megalopolis received a seven minute ovation in its Cannes world premiere last night, which was preceded by a three-minute ovation for Coppola as he entered the Grand Theatre Lumiere before the screening.
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