Francis Ford Coppola’s nearly 50-year passion project, “Megalopolis,” has finally materialized and will premiere at Cannes this week—but the film’s arrival has been marred by allegations of inappropriate behavior by the director on set, a near-disastrous production and a continued struggle to find a U.S. distributor.
The Guardian also reported Coppola would waste excessive amounts of time on set, often smoking marijuana in his trailer while the cast and crew would wait for hours, and crew members said Coppola would frequently change his mind about shoots and sometimes arrived to set without a plan.previously reported Coppola had fired nearly all the visual effects team in December 2022 and other leading members of the art department quit, with one source calling the set “absolute madness.
The film still does not have a U.S. distributor, and efforts to find one have not yet succeeded, according to, which quoted one distributor as saying there’s “no way to position this movie,” and others who felt it is a hard sell to audiences. “Megalopolis” took decades to come to fruition until Coppola decided to finance the entire $120 million project by himself, and he toldSome of the film’s cast and crew have defended Coppola amid suggestions that he behaved inappropriately or oversaw a tumultuous environment on set.