Francis Ford Coppola On Motion Picture Industry: “Streaming Is What We Use To Call Home Video,” But Major Studios May Become Extinct – Cannes
17.05.2024 - 11:33
/ deadline.com
As Megalopolis looks to seek a U.S. distribution deal, pic’s filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola was asked to comment on the state of the film industry and whether the movie’s best destination is on streaming.
“Streaming is what we use to call home video,” was the director’s first response to the query.
However, the director’s hope is that the pic finds a home in “large theater with 600 to 700 people.”
“I feel the film industry is about people getting hired to meet debt obligations, their job isn’t to make good movies, but to pay their debit,” he said.
“These new companies –Amazon, Apple, Microsoft– they have plenty of money. But the studios that we know for so long, may not be here in the future,” Coppola wisely observed.
Commenting on the risk he took with his 40-year in the making, $120M production; he reflected on rolling the dice with investing in his Napa and Sonoma wineries. He took out a loan for $20M in the 1980s and “built a winery like Tivoli gardens with swimming pools, a place where the kids would go, then grandparents…I created a place that every winery tries to duplicate. I took the money from that, and I put the risk from that.”
He emphasized that Megalopolis will leave him with “no problems” financially and that his offspring Sophia and Roman “have wonderful careers without a fortune.”
Megalopolis secured distribution in five European countries as well as a limited Imax run. Dating for the film lies in whoever snaps up domestic. Coppola separately will sell streaming and TV on the feature apart from theatrical.
Megalopolis is billed as a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks