I then made the horrible mistake of watching Godfather 3, which basically seemed to have 90s romantic comedy vibe with Al Pacino not playing Michael Coreleone but simply playing Al Pacino. What then surprised me even more was that the film received pretty favorable reviews at the time. Wow how we can be blinded in the moment!
I would very much hope that Mr. Coppola achieves something grand, especially in the current era of horrible movies, but color me skeptical based upon his later work. I could understand if executives are wary as well.
On a side note, since you mentioned him, Mallick’s recent A Hidden Life is an absolute masterpiece. It may be my favorite movie (need time for it to sink in). But what a powerful depiction of conscience & struggle. One thing I often wonder about: who is the main character, the man or his wife? Whose Hidden Life is really the subject of the movie?
Really? How so?
Godfather I tells a single coherent story about a power struggle.
Godfather II tells two stories, but neither of them relates to the story from I except in that they involve the same people at different stages of their lives.
Looking at the 2010s as a whole, we got to watch some amazing films.
We got great hard sci-fi like Gravity, Arrival, Ex Machina. The coming of age genre saw entries like Ladybird, Eighth Grade and Booksmart. Animation reached new heights with films like Inside Out, Spider-Man into the Spiderverse, and Kubo and the Two Strings.
We got comedies like The Artist, Grand Budapest Hotel, Death of Stalin, and Jojo Rabbit. Dramas like Moonlight, Fences, Spotlight, Parasite, Blue Jasmine.
Even in the ever-popular comic book genre, we got Logan and Joker playing at a very different level.
But also, it was the decade of the MCU. Let’s not underestimate what Disney has achieved with that — one big overarching story spanning over twenty films, bringing much deeper character development and more serious themes than what we’d gotten used to from blockbusters.
Isn't this always the case? Have we ever had an era when people thought "glad to be in the current era of great movies"?
Not necessarily, it's gotten much harder to produce projects that aren't commercially marketable IP like Marvel.
I listened to a Matt Damon interview recently and he basically wondered aloud if he could get a studio to make Good Will Hunting today, which made me sad to hear. Many of his early movies were low to mid-budget one-off dramas, which aren't really getting made anymore.
If you can't license your film's characters for games/toys/food/whatever, your project is a lot harder to pitch to execs in 2022.
There is some (I think) temporary help from streaming and especially from Netflix when it comes to this type of movies ("The Irishman" is just one example), but, again and imo, I think this is just temporary and that in the long term Netflix and its kin will also give up on this type of movies. And, of course, you could say (like Scorsese himself sort of did) that watching movies on a TV screen is not really "watching movies", and I'm with Scorsese on that.
[1] https://www.afcinema.com/Pascale-Ferran-Je-m-inquiete-pour-l...
Would you happen to know where to find that interview?
Coppola had to mortgage everything to do Apocalypse Now, and that was following the very successful Godfather II. This is probably why he's so confident about making a big bet on himself again while doing an "off the wall" film. It worked out well previously.
(Megalopolis honestly sounds like a much lower risk thing than sending late seventies Dennis Hopper and Marlon Brando into the jungle...)
There is a great documentary about the troubled production of Apocalypse Now: Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse[0]
After watching this, that 100M bet will look like a trifle.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Darkness:_A_Filmmake...
Studios want superhero movies or reboots and nothing else.
Hollywood is going to change dramatically over the next few decades as more projects move to post production rendering pipelines and the entire film process gets upended. Maybe this will provide much needed air to those seeking to do new and unusual things.
When only superheroes or reboots are profitable, that's what they'll finance.
Not sure if Netflix and the other streamers work differently.
Also Malick is a consistent awards contender in years where he releases a movie. Tree of Life is one of the most critically acclaimed films this century and studios like to invest in critical prestige when they can, given a reasonable budget. His movies also generally make their money back. This is also why networks will let TV shows like Crazy Ex Girlfriend and The Americans go on towards a natural conclusion, instead of canceling immediately, even if viewership is low. Coppola simply does not have that reputation anymore. In fact, I think he lost it all the way back in the early 80s. After Apocalypse Now, he failed to make a movie that captured unanimous critical favor like his string of hits in the 70s. Four of his last five movies have been largely panned. His 1996 flop, "Jack," is one of the worst movies I've ever seen and a lot of other critics agreed. A movie like that typically ends careers. He does not have the cachet to warrant an investment of $120 mill on an idea that appears at first glance to have dubious mainstream popular appeal. With that said, I would certainly see it.
Ever since streaming and, more recently, the pandemic, has affected box office numbers, they seem to be playing it very safe in terms of getting a decent ROI.
One of the last few directors that makes original films (Christopher Nolan) has only had success, I believe, because he's made recent hits. Studios are more willing to take a chance on him. Francis, on the other hand, hasn't had a successful hit since the 1970's. While no one doubts his greatness, one could argue he has peaked and his name doesn't carry the cache that directors like Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino have.
At first this seems like a non-starter because it's a for-profit film so soliciting donations might be a hard sell. If it were advertised as pre-sale where you are basically buying a copy of the film before it's made, it might work. Still, $120M is a lot of pre-sales and you would be on the hook for refunds if the film were never completed.
Actual equity investors in motion pictures entitled to a share of the profits have to be "accredited", at least in the US. You can't solicit investments from the general public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor. You also wouldn't want a huge number of investors, that's a lot of paperwork.
>What he dreams about, he said, is creating something like It's a Wonderful Life—a movie everyone goes to see, once a year, forever. “On New Year's, instead of talking about the fact that you're going to give up carbohydrates, I'd like this one question to be discussed, which is: Is the society we live in the only one available to us? And discuss it.”
>>One is her father who raised her, who taught her Latin on his lap and is devoted to a much more classical view of society, the Marcus Aurelius kind of view. The other one, who is the lover, is the enemy of the father but is dedicated to a much more progressive ‘Let's leap into the future, let's leap over all of this garbage that has contaminated humanity for 10,000 years. Let's find what we really are, which are an enlightened, friendly, joyous species.’
Is this a "French Connection" situation and it takes FF Coppola's soul to make it a tradition? HN already has all the infrastructure to establish the tradition of discussing this question. Is this a tradition worth establishing? And if so, what does it take besides making a submission?
This sounds like a project a developer would do, that's just a bit too much. One that has too many features. One that said developer has been thinking of for the past 10 years.
The passion project.
And passion projects generally fail.
Still, he pulled off Apocalypse Now under similar terms and $120m is enough to do a great movie with great talent. IIRC his script is from the early 80’s at the end of his golden age. I’m looking forward to seeing it.
Cary Fukunaga.
Cary Fukunaga—extremely gifted, talented, beautiful artists, and you could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together. The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other. They all have that stuff in it, and they almost have to have it, if they're going to justify their budget. And that's the good films, and the talented filmmakers.
It is interesting but when I watch Denis Villeneuve last films I really ignore all this genre thing because I'm so at awe of his execution. Similarly, when I first watched Tarkovsky's Solaris I quickly lost track of the plot but was drawn to the uniquely crafted cinematography and hypnotized by the deliberate manipulation of pace; at the end I was watching a movie by itself instead of contrasting it with my reading experience beforehand. The same could be said about the seamless implementation of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" into the Vietnam setting of "Apocalypse Now"
[Arrival has imho a very noticeable weak plot, it is only when you read the short story "Story of your Life" that it fits nicely in. Nevertheless once you ignore that apparent flaw, it is a wonderful shot movie.]
The "marvelisation" has gone so absurd that here you are in 2019 after dozens of franchises watching "Joker" (in parallel with another Joker version at the backdrop of Ledgers last peformance) which subversively utilized the marketing ploy into tricking the audience watching a deeply disburting indie-film about the chasms of our society depicted in a masterfully balanced unstable character drawing by an actor using nearly his whole skill set.
Cervantes as a prisoner of his time quite successfully played with the readers expectations of "chivalry romance" (a popular franchise back then) to express himself artistically in a new way we now call a "novel". You laugh and cry at the same time when reading through the book, a comedy, tragedy, persiflage, psychoanlysis, slap-stick ... it really is a mess. Embrassing the mess is not something you can persuade "rational thinking" types in the movie industry making the decisions, so you trick 'em. Unfortunately nowadays you have to do a lot of lip-service. I don't know about Chloé Zhao but "The Rider" and "Nomadland" were great movies, I wonder what "Eternals" meant to her aside the recognition of entrusting her with a 200$ million budget.
