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'Has this guy ever made a movie before?' Coppola's battle to film Megalopolis

The director has spent half his life and $120m of his own money to make his sci-fi epic. Just days ahead of its debut in Cannes, some of his crew members are questioning his methods

Coppola regularly held table readings of his latest draft of the script with actors including Paul Newman, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, James Caan, Edie Falco and Uma Thurman. About 300 rewrites, 40 years of preparation and one winery sale later, he finally had the means to make his dream script come true: in autumn 2022, shooting commenced over several sound stages at Atlanta’s Trilith studios. By the sound of things, the shoot became a clash between Coppola’s old-school approach, privileging spontaneity and “finding magic in the moment”, and newer digital film-making methods, such as filming actors in front of virtual CGI landscapes in a “volume” – effectively a giant wall of LED screens.

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