It’s no secret that Hollywood has fallen on hard times, financially speaking.
The film industry’s leaders suffered catastrophic losses at the box office in 2023, while various independent, small and foreign studios began to edge in on the market.
You know times have gotten especially rough when even a renowned filmmaking legend like Frances Ford Coppola can’t convince a studio to finance his latest project.
According to Screen Rant, Coppola was forced to fund his new sci-fi epic “Megalopolis” by selling off “a portion of his wine empire.”
“Megalopolis” reportedly cost $120 million to produce.
Although that is quite a large sum of money, it’s actually far under the budgets of many of Hollywood’s largest blockbusters.
And yet, with the current state of Hollywood churning out flop after flop, the man who created “The Godfather” — considered by some the greatest film of all time — was unable to get financial backing from a major studio.
All that said, Coppola did manage to cobble together enough money to make the movie.
Getting it in front of audiences, however, poses additional financial hurdles.
Is Hollywood in trouble?
The director reportedly needs to raise an additional $100 million to pay for marketing and distribution costs.
According to Screen Rant, studios remain unwilling to back Coppola’s project, in part because it is “experimental and bizarre.”
The “Megalopolis” plot follows an architect looking to rebuild New York City after it is destroyed by a disaster, according to IMDB.
Giancarlo Esposito (“Breaking Bad”), Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation”), Shia LaBeouf (“Transformers”), Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight and Forest Whitaker make up the impressively star-studded cast.
Now that filming is complete, distributors remain unconvinced even after seeing the finished project.
It appears unlikely that “Megalopolis” will get the wide distribution Coppola is hoping for.
At a time when Hollywood’s films are struggling to break even, betting on an experimental film — even one made by one of the most renowned filmmakers of all time — appears to be a no-go.
That tells you everything you need to know about the current state of the film industry.
