By Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s ambitious and thought-provoking “Megalopolis” has been a controversial work ever since it went into production
Throughout the last two years or so, the stories have ranged from financial issues, to talk of production going ‘off the rails’, a high-profile firing of multiple crew members, allegations of impropriety, and the recent AI-generated pull quote trailer ‘scandal’.
Ahead of the film’s North American debut, Coppola has now spoken with Empire (via Slashfilm) about one of those controversies. One of them was the story that Coppola had fired most of his art department and visual effects team in December 2022.
As a result, this led the rest of those departments to walk away from the production. Coppola explains his rationale and working with production designer Beth Mickle (“Motherless Brooklyn”) who left early on:
“‘Megalopolis’ had a big art-department need because you have to show the world of the future. Ultimately, [Beth and I] really didn’t share the same vision. We [later] disagreed to a degree that it was decided that the best thing would be if I hired a concept artist and came up with frames that showed what I wanted, which I did.”
He goes on to say the overall art department “was frustrated because they felt I was evolving the look of the picture independently of them.”
He says they wanted to do “giant sets and images,” he wanted more of a focus on “costumes and live effects” to make sure they did “some of the work” for the movie. That approach was also more cost-effective as focusing on the art department was putting the film over budget:
“The picture was heading over budget [towards $148 million]. I said, ‘We have to now economise and make it much less expensive.’ The art department had a production designer, five art directors and a supervisor. It was very hierarchical. I said, ‘Let’s fire one of the five art directors,’ and they said, ‘Well, if you do that, we’ll all resign.’ And I did and they did.
I didn’t want to economize. I wanted to get the art department to be smaller, and they didn’t want to be smaller. They wanted all the other departments to be smaller.
I said, ‘Let’s face it, I’m the only one who knows what the director has in mind. I don’t care what you think.’ Also, I’m not only the director — I was also putting up the money. So, to be told that I had to have a huge art department that I didn’t want was absurd to me.”
Coppola then says the fired VFX and art department staff got payback via those press reports: “Then, of course, they bad-mouth us: ‘Oh, this picture is crazy.’”
“Megalopolis” hits cinemas on September 27th.
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