©Courtesy of American Zoetrope Youth Without Youth
The legendary Francis Ford Coppola shows no signs of slowing down. The 85-year-old auteur told Rolling Stone that he’ll working on two more films after Megalopolis.
Coppola declared that retirement was decidedly not an option, telling the interviewer of his current plans to make a drama set in England, as well as Distant Vision, which will chronicle three generations of an Italian American family.
The first project he director plans to finance the latter project with the anticipated profits from Megalopolis, a dystopian film that tells the story of an architect bent on recreating a New York City that’s been destroyed in a disaster. The self-financed epic is scheduled for release by Lionsgate on September 27. Coppola largely self-financed the $120 million film, partly by selling off some of his wineries.
As he told Rolling Stone, “I’m working on two potential projects right now. One is a regular sort of movie that I’d like someone to finance and make in England, because I don’t have a big history with my wife in England. Everywhere else I go, I’m reminded of her all the time. The other is called Distant Vision, which is the story of three generations of an Italian American family like mine, but fictionalized, during which the phenomenon of television was invented. I would finance it with whatever Megalopolis does. I’ll want to do another roll of the dice with that one.”
Coppola made his first feature, The Bellboy and the Playgirls in 1962–some 62 years ago. He has since achieved legendary status with the such iconic films as The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation, as well as memorable titles such as The Rainmaker, Rumble Fish, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Despite ihe star power attached to Coppola’s name, early reviews for Megalopolis have been mixed. Rotten Tomatoes has given it a 53% rating, and a trailer for the film was scrapped when it was revealed that some of the reviews it cited were phony.
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