Francis Ford Coppola’s Upcoming Sci-Fi Movie Could Be Doomed By Its 2001 Disaster Footage

Summary

• Coppola’s sci-fi film, Megalopolis, has faced a 20-year-long struggle before premiering at Cannes Film Festival in 2024.
• Potential inclusion of real 9/11 footage in Megalopolis could intensify its challenges and be seen as insensitive to some audiences.
• How Coppola handles the 9/11 footage in Megalopolis may determine if the movie enhances or minimizes the real-world tragedy.

Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming sci-fi movie, Megalopolis, may contain footage from a real-world disaster, but this could doom the project. The film has already faced an uphill battle, with Coppola first announcing his idea in the 1990s. Now, all these years later, it is finally premiering at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2024, and only time will tell if its eventual theatrical premiere will make the director’s decision to self-fund Megalopolis worth it. Unfortunately, some of Coppola’s other decisions might work against it.

Megalopolis will follow Cesar (Adam Driver), an architect who dreams of improving his city after a terrible disaster. Back in the early 2000s, Coppola described his idea as a hopeful look at humanity’s future rather than a typical dystopian sci-fi. However, following the events of September 11, 2001, he decided that the world wasn’t ready for such an idea. So, he put Megalopolis on hold, only beginning filming in 2022. Still, Coppola has since revealed that some of the footage he shot in decades past made it into the film, and this possibly includes some taken during this horrible disaster.

Leading up to Megalopolis‘ premiere, Coppola revealed that his team had captured footage of the 9/11 disaster at the World Trade Center. The director noted that he had a team that regularly filmed life in New York City with “an early-model Sony digital camera,” hoping to capture the “vital activities of the city.” As it happens, this team was filming when the planes collided with the Twin Towers and captured what Coppola describes as the “heartbreaking images” of the chaos that followed.

Coppola noted that they had needed “shots of destruction” since the plot of Megalopolis follows a Soviet satellite falling out of orbit and colliding with Earth. However, he followed this up by saying that he never could have anticipated the “tragedy at the World Trade Center.” Though Coppola confirms that some of the footage taken during the early 2000s made it into Megalopolis, he is never clear whether this includes the 9/11 footage. If these disturbing scenes are included in the sci-fi film, then Coppola’s passion project could face some backlash.

Megalopolis
‘s cast also includes Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Grace VanderWaal, Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, and more.

Real footage of 9/11 in Megalopolis could be too disturbing for some audiences, and this could make the movie’s success far more complicated. Of course, this would only add to the staws piled atop the camel’s back. Coppola’s passion project has faced several obstacles over the past 20 years. This began with no major studios willing to take on the project, which is part of why the movie fell through when the director announced the idea in the 90s. To solve this, Coppola decided to self-fund the film, putting his own $250 million into production. Now, a theatrical release has become difficult as well.

Unless the potential 9/11 footage included in the movie is handled carefully, it could push the movie’s problems over the edge.

Though Megalopolis is premiering at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2024, it still doesn’t have a theatrical release date. This is because Coppola has been unable to secure a distributor. The project has been called too niche for larger companies but too big for smaller ones to manage. Of course, the director had this same problem with The Godfather and Apocolypse Now, so Megalopolis may be safe. However, unless the potential 9/11 footage included in the movie is handled carefully, it could push the movie’s problems over the edge.

Real footage of people panicking on the streets of New York may be too much for prospective Megalopolis audiences, but the main issue of including this in the film is that it minimizes the real-world disaster. Coppola’s film is about a fictional tragedy, and if he takes actual footage from an event such as 9/11 and tries to pass it off as being the result of a Soviet satellite crash, all for the sake of entertainment, this may be considered disrespectful. However, if this harrowing footage is presented as precisely what it is, it could significantly enhance Megalopolis.

Coppola has stated that he wants audiences to walk away from his upcoming movie with a renewed faith in humanity. Megalopolis explores the idea of societal utopia, taking inspiration from the period after tragedy when humanity comes together to grow and heal. In an effort to drive this home, the 9/11 footage may be featured as an example of past disasters society has faced. Then, further footage can show how New York City came together to rebuild, perhaps inspiring Driver’s Cesar to create a better world following his fictional disaster. In this way, Megalopolis would show 9/11’s survivors the respect they deserve.