‘Megalopolis’ Got the Hollywood Treatment. The Bad Kind.
The US film industry was too afraid to bet on Francis Ford Coppola’s new movie. That’s its loss.
What does Hollywood really have to lose at this point?
Christophe Simon/AFP/ Getty Images
“When we leap into the unknown, we prove that we’re free.” So goes a line of dialogue in Francis Ford Coppola’s new film Megalopolis, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this month. After the tumultuous debut, Coppola told the press it’s a line that resonates with him personally. “That’s me making this film,” the filmmaker, who self-financed the movie, explained. “To all of the studio big shots, I proved that I’m free, and they’re not. Because they don’t dare leap into the unknown. And I do. That’s the only way to prove that you’re free.”
It’s a glorious proclamation, a mic drop, to an industry that he helped build and that subsequently abandoned him. He hedged his victory lap, however, with a caveat: “I don’t recommend it.”
But as Hollywood becomes more risk-averse and abandons creativity in hopes of scoring what it believes will be guaranteed hits, more filmmakers just might have to.