'Godfather' Director Francis Ford Coppola Plans to Spend $120 Million of His Own Money on New Film

Francis Ford Coppola is putting his money where his mouth is.

The Godfather director and co-writer, 82, is setting his sights on a new film called Megalopolis, which he told GQ in a recently published profile would cost in the ballpark of $120 million to make — an amount he plans to put forth himself.

"I know that Megalopolis, the more personal I make it, and the more like a dream in me that I do it, the harder it will be to finance," he explained.

Coppola added, "And the longer it will earn money because people will be spending the next 50 years trying to think: What's really in Megalopolis? What is he saying? My God, what does that mean when that happens?"

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The project's plot is difficult to summarize, according to GQ, but Coppola describes it as something that will explore the idea of "utopia." He wants it to be a film that people see annually, akin to It's a Wonderful Life.

"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," he said.

When asked by GQ how studio executives react when Coppola describes the movie to them, he said, "Same way they did when I had won five Oscars and was the hottest film director in town and walked in with Apocalypse Now and said, 'I'd like to make this next,' " adding that he owns the latter film "because no one else wanted it."

"So imagine, if [this] was the case when I was 33 or whatever the age and I had won every award and had broken every record and still absolutely no one wanted to join me," Coppola said.

Coppola himself will be the subject of an upcoming movie titled Francis and the Godfather, about the making of The Godfather.

The film will focus on the push and pull between Coppola (played by Oscar Isaac) and Paramount studio head Robert Evans (Jake Gyllenhaal) as they worked on the 1972 classic.

Barry Levinson will direct the production, which will detail how Coppola and Evans gambled on the hit film that starred Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, John Cazale and Diane Keaton.

Coppola gave the project his stamp of approval, telling Deadline in September 2020, "Any movie that Barry Levinson makes about anything, will be interesting and worthwhile!"