Francis Ford Coppola to start work on ‘epic’ sci-fi project that rivals ‘Apocalypse Now’

Legendary director Francis Ford Coppola has opened up about his next project Megalopolis, calling the sci-fi project an epic that rivals the scale of Apocalypse Now.

The 79-year-old Coppola told Deadline, “I plan this year to begin my longstanding ambition to make a major work utilizing all I have learned during my long career, beginning at age 16 doing theater, and that will be an epic on a grand scale, which I’ve entitled Megalopolis.”

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Considering that Coppola has overseen The Godfather, The Godfather II, The Conversation, The Cotton Club, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Apocalypse Now, that’s quite the cinematic arsenal to dive into.

“It is unusual,” continued Coppola. “It will be a production on a grand scale with a large cast. It makes use of all of my years of trying films in different styles and types culminating in what I think is my own voice and aspiration.”

“It is not within the mainstream of what is produced now, but I am intending and wishing and in fact encouraged, to begin production this year.”

Deadline even went as far as to compare Megalopolis to Apocalypse Now, insisting that it rivals the ambition of his loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, which saw sets destroyed by a typhoon, Harvey Keitel fired as the lead, his replacement Martin Sheen suffer a heart-attack, Marlon Brando arrive overweight and unprepared, and its budget triple in size.

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Coppola, who originally had the idea for Megalopolis in the early 1980s, has finished the script, and is already approaching potential actors, with Jude Law a name that’s been linked.

The Oscar winning director actually shot some second unit footage for Megalopolis back in the summer of 2001. However, 9/11 immediately brought the film, which revolves around an architect fighting a mayor to create a utopia in the city, to a halt.