This year, Francis Ford Coppola’s sci-fi epic Megalopolis will celebrate its world premiere. The Apocalypse Now director’s decades-long planned work was almost shot in 2001
With milestones such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola has directed some of the most important works in film history. Over the decades, he also planned a science fiction project that he was unable to realize until the very end.
Megalopolis, which Coppola financed entirely himself, was actually shot in 2024 and will celebrate its public world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival after initial private screenings. Megalopolis was almost shot in 2001, although the production was even affected by the terrorist attacks on September 11th.
Coppola’s sci-fi epic: 30 hours of Megalopolis raw footage were shot 23 years ago
Vanity Fair has published a detailed article on the history of sci-fi films, for which Coppola has written a lengthy statement. Among other things, he discusses the failed Megalopolis shoot in 2001. In addition to the casting process and script readings, second unit recordings were carried out at the time.
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Coppola is said to have collected a total of 30 hours of footage with the sole aim of capturing city life in New York in as much detail as possible. From food deliveries to garbage disposal, the director captured scenes that would eventually become part of Megalopolis.
This stage of production also coincided with the terrorist attacks of September 11. Coppola writes that his second unit team even captured moments of the tragedy on location. However, as Variety and others reported in 2001, the director then scrapped the shooting of Megalopolis again in order to rework the script. In the Vanity Fair article, Coppola states that he rewrote the Megalopolis script at least 300 times (!)
Watch the trailer for Coppola’s Apocalypse Now here:
