Coppola Eyes All-star Cast for Megalopolis
July 19 -- Francis Ford Coppola isn't letting the latest legal setback about his unrealized film Pinocchio get him down. The Godfather director is already prepping his next dream project, to be called Megalopolis.
No, it's not about superheroes, as the title might imply, but, the auteur tells Variety's Army Archerd, he has a superstar cast in mind: namely Russell Crowe, Robert De Niro, Nicolas Cage (who happens to be his nephew), and Paul Newman.
Wow, that's our dream cast too — gosh, do you think any of these Oscar winners would show up for our next home movie? But we digress …
Coppola is clearly thinking big with this one. He tells Archerd that it's a "Roman epic [of] Cecil B. DeMille" proportions. He projects that it will cost around $60 million, but no more than $80 million.
However, there's no room in this film for one particular actor, says the Apocalypse Now helmer. Nixing rumors that Warren Beatty is among those currently reading the script, Coppola says, "There's really not a role for him in it." Dis-missed!
Coppola has long yearned to bring his version of Pinocchio to the screen but received what appears to be a final death knell on Wednesday when a judge refused to reinstate an $80 million settlement he won in 1998 from Warner Bros. that was later reversed.
Now, of course, the tale of the man-made toy that wants to be a real boy is all the rage, inspiring both Steven Spielberg's latest, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and Roberto Benigni's just-begun Italian-language production of the story.
Coppola told Archerd, "We tried to see [A.I.] Saturday, but the theater was sold out."
Related Stories
ABC News Live