Hardly any other film is more eagerly awaited this year than Megalopolis. Francis Ford Coppola’s (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) first directorial effort in 13 years promises to be one of the… most unusual science fiction films to ever be seen on the big screen. Now the premiere is set.
Cannes, Venice or Toronto? In recent months, the film world has been busy speculating about which film festival Coppola will present his new work at. Well has Cannes won the contract. Deadline has learned exclusively that Megaolopolis will premiere as part of the official competition on May 17, 2024.
Megalopolis in Cannes: Francis Ford Coppola brings his hotly anticipated sci-fi epic to the Croisette
The Cannes premiere of Megalopolis comes as quite a surprise. Last but not least, Coppola had said that he didn’t want to show the film at a festival before finding a distributor for it theatrical release in the US and overseas has found. We last reported that the major Hollywood studios were backing down on Megalopolis.
American Zoetrope
Megalopolis
Coppola’s film not commercial enough, says various reports. Apparently we are dealing with an idiosyncratic sci-fi film that is predestined to become the next Blade Runner – unrecognized when it was released in theaters, but later became immortal as a cult film. We will be very excited to see how Megalopolis is received in Cannes.
The first reactions sounded extremely promising. In the last few days, however, some have joined in critical industry voices. Mostly it was more about the question of how best to sell the film. So far, Megalopolis has only been shown to a specialist audience, including Coppola’s circle of friends.
Coppola has a lot at stake with the film. Not only did the director spend decades developing the material. After the project kept falling apart, he sold large parts of his wine empirein order to manage the impressive budget of 120 million US dollars single-handedly.
The master director is in good company in Cannes. While Coppola presents his sci-fi epic, which has been in the works for over four decades, fellow director and Star Wars creator George Lucas will receive the festival’s honorary Palme. This makes two of the most influential filmmakers represented in Cannes this year.
Coppola’s sci-fi epic: When does Megalopolis open in cinemas?
As already written: To date, Coppola has not found a distributor for Megalopolis, neither in the USA nor in any other cinema market. Accordingly, no cinema release has been determined yet. However, Coppola reiterates several times that he wants to bring the film to cinemas this year, probably in autumn
– including IMAX evaluation.