Francis Ford Coppola’s $100M Dollar Bet
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I then made the horrible mistake of watching Godfather 3, which basically seemed to have 90s romantic comedy vibe with Al Pacino not playing Michael Coreleone but simply playing Al Pacino. What then surprised me even more was that the film received pretty favorable reviews at the time. Wow how we can be blinded in the moment!
I would very much hope that Mr. Coppola achieves something grand, especially in the current era of horrible movies, but color me skeptical based upon his later work. I could understand if executives are wary as well.
On a side note, since you mentioned him, Mallick’s recent A Hidden Life is an absolute masterpiece. It may be my favorite movie (need time for it to sink in). But what a powerful depiction of conscience & struggle. One thing I often wonder about: who is the main character, the man or his wife? Whose Hidden Life is really the subject of the movie?
For what it is worth, the recent remaster of Gf3, Gf3: Coda improves the storytelling of Gf3 significantly and I would say makes the movie considerably better, but it is still not competitive with Gf1 and Gf2. That said, I really recommend everyone watch the Coda remaster at this point and do it with an open mind.
While I'll agree Sofia is a much better director than actress (she’s a truly outstanding writer and director) and that Ryder would have been better (Coppola later did work with her on Bram Stoker's Dracula), I’m not going to be mad at him casting his daughter or even blaming it on nepotism. After all, all the previous examples of nepotism, like working with his father, his sister, his brother-in-law, his nephew, etc worked out quite well. Like, the whole Coppola family thing is that they all work together and hire each other. She wasn’t a great actress, but I don’t think she’s want sunk that film. The truth is, any film in a series coming 15 years after two of the greatest films of all time (and the rare sequel that is arguably better than the original, which was already a masterpiece) would have an impossible standard to live up to. Even if Godfather III was a perfect film, I’m not sure it could live up to the hype that the first two carried, especially after 15 years.
And it wasn’t a perfect film. It’s not a piece of garbage but it isn’t in the same league as the other two, which again, are two of the absolute greatest films of all time. But seeing how successful nepotism has been for the Coppola family, I think blaming his teenage daughter is fairly weak.
TL; DR: it was a hard first role for a young actress
I don't mind the Godfather III. It's not nearly the movie its predecessors were but it's also not nearly as bad as some claim, but during any scene with Coppola in it, I literally need to skip forward to avoid the sheer cringe effect she creates with her dialogue, facial expressions and gestures..
Should someone have spotted this and replaced her? Maybe, but her scenes were not crucial enough for anyone to care to tell the director.
ever read the book? It's a dog.
It's worth reading to appreciate the many modifications that transformed it from a mediocre novel into a brilliant movie.
I see the third part as a portrayal of changing of times. Gone are the days of past, the time has changed, and so has characters and the story.
Really? How so?
Godfather I tells a single coherent story about a power struggle.
Godfather II tells two stories, but neither of them relates to the story from I except in that they involve the same people at different stages of their lives.
Looking at the 2010s as a whole, we got to watch some amazing films.
We got great hard sci-fi like Gravity, Arrival, Ex Machina. The coming of age genre saw entries like Ladybird, Eighth Grade and Booksmart. Animation reached new heights with films like Inside Out, Spider-Man into the Spiderverse, and Kubo and the Two Strings.
We got comedies like The Artist, Grand Budapest Hotel, Death of Stalin, and Jojo Rabbit. Dramas like Moonlight, Fences, Spotlight, Parasite, Blue Jasmine.
Even in the ever-popular comic book genre, we got Logan and Joker playing at a very different level.
But also, it was the decade of the MCU. Let’s not underestimate what Disney has achieved with that — one big overarching story spanning over twenty films, bringing much deeper character development and more serious themes than what we’d gotten used to from blockbusters.
I recently rewatched 12 angry men, and was surprised at how quickly and efficiently they introduced 12 characters. Off-hand remark by one character, an expression by another, the way they stood and moved around; in around 5 seconds you knew the characters without even knowing their names.
Contrast to Marvel's characters, which have hours of development each, yet don't really feel alive. All of them have tragic backstory, all of them are heroic in the same way, most of the male characters are snarky/sarcastic/have big egos.
Those were terrible movies and not hard sci-fi. Okay, maybe Arrival was watchable.
What was unique about Gravity was that it was sci-if but set it our universe and in our contemporary time period. It at least tried to operate within the constraints of current inventory of space hardware. You are non-space-enthusiast it was amazing.
Isn't this always the case? Have we ever had an era when people thought "glad to be in the current era of great movies"?
Toy story, Braveheart, Apollo 13, Usual Suspects, Heat, Casino, Seven, Clueless, 12 Monkeys, Babe, Get Shorty, Leaving Las Vegas, etc.
A great time to be going to the Cinema.
Also works for TV, music, books, plays.
Imagine all the crap that was on at the same time as Shakespeare that no one remembered 5 years later, let alone 400
Not necessarily, it's gotten much harder to produce projects that aren't commercially marketable IP like Marvel.
I listened to a Matt Damon interview recently and he basically wondered aloud if he could get a studio to make Good Will Hunting today, which made me sad to hear. Many of his early movies were low to mid-budget one-off dramas, which aren't really getting made anymore.
If you can't license your film's characters for games/toys/food/whatever, your project is a lot harder to pitch to execs in 2022.
There is some (I think) temporary help from streaming and especially from Netflix when it comes to this type of movies ("The Irishman" is just one example), but, again and imo, I think this is just temporary and that in the long term Netflix and its kin will also give up on this type of movies. And, of course, you could say (like Scorsese himself sort of did) that watching movies on a TV screen is not really "watching movies", and I'm with Scorsese on that.
[1] https://www.afcinema.com/Pascale-Ferran-Je-m-inquiete-pour-l...
I would suspect it did not make that money back. The studios are in the movie business and not the lighting money on fire business.
I think we have just seen a fundamental shift in the tastes of the 18-35 demographic and what kind of movies they want to see. Quality fast food type movies as opposed to a full sit down multiple course meal type movie.
I love Coppola but I wouldn't want to invest in this project either at this point.
Affleck said (in a recent interview with Damon) that he wouldn't be able to make Argo today as a movie. It'd have to be a six hour mini-series.
Would you happen to know where to find that interview?
it seems it was in the 'hot ones' show
Coppola had to mortgage everything to do Apocalypse Now, and that was following the very successful Godfather II. This is probably why he's so confident about making a big bet on himself again while doing an "off the wall" film. It worked out well previously.
(Megalopolis honestly sounds like a much lower risk thing than sending late seventies Dennis Hopper and Marlon Brando into the jungle...)
There is a great documentary about the troubled production of Apocalypse Now: Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse[0]
After watching this, that 100M bet will look like a trifle.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Darkness:_A_Filmmake...
Studios want superhero movies or reboots and nothing else.
Hollywood is going to change dramatically over the next few decades as more projects move to post production rendering pipelines and the entire film process gets upended. Maybe this will provide much needed air to those seeking to do new and unusual things.
The too complex dialogue argument also doesn't really make sense considering that movies get translated in the biggest overseas markets.
https://www.boxofficepro.com/box-office-rewind-a-history-of-...
Marvel films make most of their money internationally, the bigger the film, the bigger the foreign share. E.g. Infinity War $357.1 million domestically and $1.2 billion worldwide.
The argument is that it's much easier to get plot, jokes, and moderate character development across in translation (and more convincing to dub!) with a base script that uses simpler English.
It was renewed within a month of release.
This is a franchise where individual movies cost $150m+ to make. I can see why a studio wouldn't be willing to greenlight all of it at one go, especially given how the previous adaptation attempt at the same franchise was not received well.
I don't understand - what are they currently doing if not rendering in post-production?
GPUs will surpass 2010's Pixar. This, coupled with real time motion capture and photogrammetry, will enable more creativity than ever before from more people than have ever been involved. A democratization that even Disney won't be able to counter.
But to directly answer your question, the process of writing moves off the text editor and directly into the production fold. Changes can be made dynamically or even in post. We'll see tools for graphical story arcs, character development radar charts, backstories, and more as these things all morph into real time activities.
Perhaps, but the same was promised when camera and editing equipment became commodities. There are a few examples like the Blair Witch Project, or Tangerine, a great movie which was filmed with two iPhones. But in general successful movies are still expensively made by professional teams.
The problem is: Even if the technical equipment is cheap, successful movies still require time and talent and lots of hard work.
But they don't and the creativity of the young, in many fields, is being wasted.
A talented person can make groundbreaking music using only a guitar or a piano. With a mac, a microphone, a midi-keyboard and enough skill, one person can produce professional level recordings. Technology is not the limiting factor, it has been available for decades.
Movies are different - they require so many more specialized skills and resources. You need actors, sets, lighting, music, sound design, costume design, a script etc. It is great the technology becomes more affordable, but putting your neighbor into a motion-capture suit will not make him a great actor and having Final Cut available on a mac will not make you into a talented movie editor.
Just compare the number of credits on you favorite piece of music compared to you favorite movie.
There wasn't an easy way to build content and find an audience. Now there's an ever increasing opportunity.
I think we're early in this game and only getting our first look at what's to come.
Unreal/Epic got a shout out above. Can you point out anyone else who is working seriously in the space?
That’s exciting.
That's awesome! I know a bunch of IATSE folks and they're all super cool.
It's such a unique industry, and the excitement on set is totally palpable.
> The storytelling industry fascinates me, but I would love to see user generated, interactive fiction
I'm working on exactly this now! Collaborative motion capture and environmental control with audience participation. I haven't launched publicly yet, but used to demo my progress with a live audience on Twitch. They loved it, but I think I loved it even more.
This workflow beats film by miles and opens up so many new and unique storytelling techniques that have never been explored. It's incredibly fun, too.
I bought the domain name "storyteller.io" to launch with. I should be releasing two minor tangentially-related pieces this week: Twitch TTS for audience monetization and a 3D volumetric/voxel camera that can be injected directly into games. The motion capture, face animation, and interactive world pieces should follow early next quarter. (I need more people - I'm barely getting sleep and keep missing my own deadlines.)
I've had a few people that heard my "this is the future" pitch tell me I should join YC, but I'm trying to release more stuff before the deadline. As a backup I have animated "deepfake as a service" versions of Garry Tan, Justin Kan, Alexis Ohanian, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, and Palmer Luckey and was thinking of cold emailing them. You type something, and they say it in a video. As a service. It's stupid, but I think it'd get their attention.
I want this because I'm a storyteller that hates film. Not the creatives and the excitement, just the mundane, repeatable work. And the projects that seem out of reach for budget and practical reasons.
Get some sleep.
We saw the results of the low code movement with impossible to maintain Access and FoxPro “applications” and the Excel spreadsheets with VB.
I have all of the equipment I need to make a great movie or music video - a 4K camera, a computer, and movie and music editing software. I technical know how to use all of the software well enough to make videos and to mix music.
But I don’t have the talent.
You have people like Blumhouse , Tyler Perry, and Jordan Peele who whether you like their movies or not, know how to make successful low budget movies. Not every YouTuber can.
We’ve seen democraticization of creating music, books, and movies. But still all of the money is being made by a relatively few.
GPUs have already surpassed 2010s Pixar’s. The Intel Mac Pro and the M1 Pro Macs can already do amazing things - in the hands of the right people.
Apple is just dumb hardware. It's not helping any more than a pencil. Yes, you can make art with it, but in my mind it's like programming with a hole punch. We can now build tools that translate the thoughts in your head directly into media. And even improve upon them. This wasn't possible just five years ago.
Like I said before, let's come back in ten years and see.
I have the know how and equipment to edit videos. I can edit “well enough” for internal videos and demos for YouTube. You put those same tools in the hands of someone with talent, they can be amazing tools.
Just like WordPress in my hands will still look like a table driven layout from the 2000s
It’s hard to break into any media industry well enough to make it a sustainable business. It’s about how do you stand out in the crowd and get people to pay you money? It’s not better technology that’s going to make it easier to find “one thousand true fans” that will give you money and it takes a lot more than one thousand true fans to make it based on just advertising.
When only superheroes or reboots are profitable, that's what they'll finance.
Not sure if Netflix and the other streamers work differently.
Right now they work differently. They are throwing around big money for the middle tier budget movie--not blockbusters and not small indies.
But all it takes is for the data to suggest that its better to make 5 Red Notices than 10 middle budge adult movies and they'll just stop making them.
Also Malick is a consistent awards contender in years where he releases a movie. Tree of Life is one of the most critically acclaimed films this century and studios like to invest in critical prestige when they can, given a reasonable budget. His movies also generally make their money back. This is also why networks will let TV shows like Crazy Ex Girlfriend and The Americans go on towards a natural conclusion, instead of canceling immediately, even if viewership is low. Coppola simply does not have that reputation anymore. In fact, I think he lost it all the way back in the early 80s. After Apocalypse Now, he failed to make a movie that captured unanimous critical favor like his string of hits in the 70s. Four of his last five movies have been largely panned. His 1996 flop, "Jack," is one of the worst movies I've ever seen and a lot of other critics agreed. A movie like that typically ends careers. He does not have the cachet to warrant an investment of $120 mill on an idea that appears at first glance to have dubious mainstream popular appeal. With that said, I would certainly see it.
Ever since streaming and, more recently, the pandemic, has affected box office numbers, they seem to be playing it very safe in terms of getting a decent ROI.
One of the last few directors that makes original films (Christopher Nolan) has only had success, I believe, because he's made recent hits. Studios are more willing to take a chance on him. Francis, on the other hand, hasn't had a successful hit since the 1970's. While no one doubts his greatness, one could argue he has peaked and his name doesn't carry the cache that directors like Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino have.
>What he dreams about, he said, is creating something like It's a Wonderful Life—a movie everyone goes to see, once a year, forever. “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.”
>>One is her father who raised her, who taught her Latin on his lap and is devoted to a much more classical view of society, the Marcus Aurelius kind of view. The other one, who is the lover, is the enemy of the father but is dedicated to a much more progressive ‘Let's leap into the future, let's leap over all of this garbage that has contaminated humanity for 10,000 years. Let's find what we really are, which are an enlightened, friendly, joyous species.’
Is this a "French Connection" situation and it takes FF Coppola's soul to make it a tradition? HN already has all the infrastructure to establish the tradition of discussing this question. Is this a tradition worth establishing? And if so, what does it take besides making a submission?
At first this seems like a non-starter because it's a for-profit film so soliciting donations might be a hard sell. If it were advertised as pre-sale where you are basically buying a copy of the film before it's made, it might work. Still, $120M is a lot of pre-sales and you would be on the hook for refunds if the film were never completed.
Actual equity investors in motion pictures entitled to a share of the profits have to be "accredited", at least in the US. You can't solicit investments from the general public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor. You also wouldn't want a huge number of investors, that's a lot of paperwork.
Still, he pulled off Apocalypse Now under similar terms and $120m is enough to do a great movie with great talent. IIRC his script is from the early 80’s at the end of his golden age. I’m looking forward to seeing it.
This sounds like a project a developer would do, that's just a bit too much. One that has too many features. One that said developer has been thinking of for the past 10 years.
The passion project.
And passion projects generally fail.
You've cherry picked huge hits across decades... I'm saying generally if the budget is >$100million and it's a Sci-fi (not superhero/franchise), it'll probably not be a hit
I could be wrong (and potentially this 'big budgets are risky' is the case with big movies movies in general, not only big sci-fi movies.) Just an impression I've been developing
Yes, big movies are in general a risk. Sci-fi movies often have high budgets due to nature of the genre so they come with risk, but I don't think the genre fails at an abnormally large rate compared to other genres.
Cary Fukunaga.
Cary Fukunaga—extremely gifted, talented, beautiful artists, and you could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together. The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other. They all have that stuff in it, and they almost have to have it, if they're going to justify their budget. And that's the good films, and the talented filmmakers.
It is interesting but when I watch Denis Villeneuve last films I really ignore all this genre thing because I'm so at awe of his execution. Similarly, when I first watched Tarkovsky's Solaris I quickly lost track of the plot but was drawn to the uniquely crafted cinematography and hypnotized by the deliberate manipulation of pace; at the end I was watching a movie by itself instead of contrasting it with my reading experience beforehand. The same could be said about the seamless implementation of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" into the Vietnam setting of "Apocalypse Now"
[Arrival has imho a very noticeable weak plot, it is only when you read the short story "Story of your Life" that it fits nicely in. Nevertheless once you ignore that apparent flaw, it is a wonderful shot movie.]
The "marvelisation" has gone so absurd that here you are in 2019 after dozens of franchises watching "Joker" (in parallel with another Joker version at the backdrop of Ledgers last peformance) which subversively utilized the marketing ploy into tricking the audience watching a deeply disburting indie-film about the chasms of our society depicted in a masterfully balanced unstable character drawing by an actor using nearly his whole skill set.
Cervantes as a prisoner of his time quite successfully played with the readers expectations of "chivalry romance" (a popular franchise back then) to express himself artistically in a new way we now call a "novel". You laugh and cry at the same time when reading through the book, a comedy, tragedy, persiflage, psychoanlysis, slap-stick ... it really is a mess. Embrassing the mess is not something you can persuade "rational thinking" types in the movie industry making the decisions, so you trick 'em. Unfortunately nowadays you have to do a lot of lip-service. I don't know about Chloé Zhao but "The Rider" and "Nomadland" were great movies, I wonder what "Eternals" meant to her aside the recognition of entrusting her with a 200$ million budget.