By Rollo Ross and Danielle Broadway
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Renowned American director Francis Ford Coppola believes his harshly criticized science fiction film “Megalopolis” offers audiences a unique narrative vastly different from what they are accustomed to seeing.
“We’re so used to seeing movies that are like other movies because they’re financed that way,” Coppola told Reuters during a Zoom interview while he was at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the film was also screened.
“It’s [movies like other movies] always something that’s already proven that it will make money. It’s like a potato chip that you know is habit forming and ‘Megalopolis’ is new,” he added.
After debuting this year at the Cannes Film Festival, Coppola’s $120 million self-funded project is going to be shared with broader audiences when it arrives to U.S. movie theaters on Friday.
While the film will be distributed by Lionsgate, Coppola maintains ownership of the movie.
Adam Driver stars as Cesar Catilina, an architect-scientist who wants to better a fictional version of New York City called New Rome, pitting him against Mayor Franklyn Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito, who prizes authority and institutions over change.
Catilina falls in love with the mayor’s daughter, Julia, played by “Game of Thrones”‘ Nathalie Emmanuel, as she helps him work towards his vision and re-ignites his power to stop time.
When asked if “Megalopolis” is an allegory for his film-making journey, the 85-year-old director said, “All of my films are.”
“When I was young and made ‘The Godfather,’” I had to be like Michael [Michael Corleone] because I had no power and I had to be very Machiavellian. When I made ‘Apocalypse Now,’ I was in an absurd situation with helicopters and millions of dollars every week that I was paying for, so I had to become a megalomaniac like Kurtz [Colonel Kurtz]. You know, I have always become the characters in my movies just to survive,” he added.
While the press response to the movie has been poor with a low score of 51% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Driver believes “Megalopolis” is a film that needs more than one viewing to be truly absorbed.
“I think it does have legs and I think it is something that you want to return to and can return to and mine something else out of it,” Driver said. “And it, you know, has a place in people’s minds as being one of a kind, which I don’t think a lot of films can say that, you know.”
(Reporting by Rollo Ross and Danielle Broadway; Editing by Mary Milliken and David Gregorio)
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