Behind the Scenes of Francis Ford Coppola’s Disastrous $120 Million Flop

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse is one of the all-time best documentaries about filmmaking, charting Francis Ford Coppola‘s arduous efforts to craft a Vietnam War epic cast in a Joseph Conrad mold—a vision that ultimately resulted in Apocalypse Now.

Directed by George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr (using plentiful on-the-ground footage shot by Coppola’s wife Eleanor), it’s a mesmerizing portrait of genius and hubris, inspiration and foolishness, triumph and calamity. And given that the famed auteur never again reached the heights achieved on his 1979 classic, it’s also a snapshot of the last truly masterful gasp of a great artist.

Even so, Coppola has for decades continued making movies (some very good, like The Outsiders, The Cotton Club, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula; some not so good, such as The Rainmaker and Jack), and in 2024, he finally debuted a project nearly 50 years in the making: Megalopolis, a lavish sci-fi parable about the fall of an indulgent and corrupt empire.

With Adam Driver as its Caesar (his name is actually “Cesar”) and an A-list cast embodying various absurdist characters, it’s a swing for the fences that turned out to be a grand misstep marked by sloppy aesthetics, over-the-top performances, and unsubtle plotting and sermonizing.

Miscalculations don’t get more extravagant or costly, as Coppola himself spent $120 million of his own money (via the sale of stakes in his wine company) to fund the folly.

Now, Mike Figgis does for Megalopolis what Hickenlooper and Bahr did for Apocalypse Now with Megadoc. Hitting theaters Sept. 19, it’s a look at Coppola’s creative process that proves a significantly more illuminating and entertaining than the director’s finished product.

Charting the production from initial table read to Cannes Film Festival red carpet premiere, Figgis’ documentary affords a fascinating peek at Coppola’s artistry, in which careful preparation and strict demands commingle freely with improvisation and collaboration. There are no outright fireworks, but the 83-year-old Coppola’s various struggles—with actors, department heads, and his own stamina—provide stirring insight into an inimitable voice striving to make a long-held, and highly personal, dream a reality.

“Who cares if you die broke if you made something that you think is beautiful?” asks Coppola at the start of Megadoc. As the ensuing action illustrates, money is not the end goal of this monumental undertaking, even if financing is an ever-present concern.

Embarking on Megalopolis is a massive gamble for the filmmaker, and to raise the stakes, he hires Figgis to document for posterity the ups and downs of its invention. That begins in a large rehearsal space where Coppola and some of his actors—including Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Aubrey Plaza, and Nathalie Emmanuel—gather to read the script and play actor games. To Figgis, this is a successful early stage, since by its conclusion, Coppola has earned his performers’ respect and fostered an atmosphere of camaraderie.

Some of Coppola’s stars (Voight, Plaza) are new to Megalopolis, others (like LeBeouf) first read it five years prior, and a few—such as Giancarlo Esposito—have a history with the film that dates back to a 2001 table read that, as revealed by archival footage, included Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman, Billy Crudup, and Sarah Polley (among others). Later 2003 screen tests featuring Ryan Gosling in LaBeouf’s role further demonstrate the project’s extended lifespan, as well as its mutating character.

Even in its present incarnation, it remains in constant flux, as Coppola uses his script less as a bible than as a skeleton for on-set experimentation. While everyone involved is amazed at his openness to try new things—Dustin Hoffman remarks that the entire venture feels like one big rehearsal—it invariably begets problems, be they related to sets, visual effects, props, or LaBeouf, whose ceaseless questions, attempts to switch things up, and arguments eventually drive Coppola a bit mad.

Figgis relays the price tag for each of Megalopolis’ specific departments, and at a certain point, Coppola begins to bristle at the sheer size (and attendant modern techniques) of his production, complaining that it takes forever to change a costume or piece of jewelry, and pushing back against producers’ desires to replace practical with digital effects.

This last quarrel is the reason, as reported breathlessly by The Hollywood Reporter at the time, that Coppola parted ways with his VFX team and production designer Beth Mickle. In Megadoc, Mickle seems genuinely sad about the failed partnership, stating that, in hindsight, she would have approached things differently. Still, this hardly comes across as an example of an out-of-control set, and in fact, Figgis—who admits that his instincts are to seek out setbacks and tensions because they make for better drama—depicts a post-crisis Coppola as far happier and more relaxed.

Figgis likens Coppola to a jazz musician and long-time friend George Lucas describes him as a towering force who’s always jumping off (figurative) cliffs in service of his ambitions, and Megadoc suggests that both are true.

In interview after interview, the director is celebrated for his adventurous search for the right tone, image, and moment, even as he always remains confident about the big picture. To watch him translate what’s in his head to the screen is routinely transfixing.

What really makes the proceedings interesting, though, is the disconnect between his admirable ethos and methods and the end result, since clips from Megalopolis serve as reminders that what came from all this toil and trouble is an intermittently handsome mess that’s more absurd than profound.

Because Coppola successfully wraps Megalopolis without suffering any massive health issues, and because its completion never seems in grave doubt, Megadoc can’t match Hearts of Darkness’ bracing helter-skelter electricity. Nonetheless, it simply renders Figgis’ doc less vital in the same way that Megalopolis falls short of Apocalypse Now.

Ultimately, this non-fiction affair confirms that Coppola hasn’t lost his go-for-broke spirit but has learned to reign it in enough to prevent disaster. In the process, however, it implies that maybe his latest would have benefited, on the screen, from more behind-the-scenes chaos and madness.

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