Francis Ford Coppola revealed that he rewrote the script of his upcoming film, “Megalopolis”, 300 times. The sci-fi film is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in the middle of the month.

Coppola had been working on the Megalopolis movie for decades and eventually decided to finance it himself for $120 million by selling a stake in his winery business to make it happen.

The ambitious project has finally been completed and is Coppola’s first film to hit theaters in a decade.

Amid delays in the lengthy production process, Coppola ended up rewriting the script for the film hundreds of times.

“I remember one time I took 130 blank pages and put a title in bold font boldly announcing Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis” said the American director, producer and screenwriter in his statements to Vanity Fair.

Inspired by Herbert George Wells’ Things to Come, Coppola’s epic takes place in a New York City-like metropolis in the wake of a disaster. Adam Driver plays an idealistic architect who wants to rebuild the city into something greater than what it was. Giancarlo Esposito is the corrupt mayor of the town who wants to keep things the way they were.

“I wasn’t really working on this script for 40 years, but rather I was collecting notes and scraps for a scrapbook of things I found interesting for a future script, or examples of political cartoons or different historical themes.” Coppola said of the project’s progress.

“Finally, after a long time, I settled on the idea of ​​a Roman epic. And later, a Roman epic set in modern America, so I really started writing that script, off and on, for the last dozen or so years. Also, as I’ve made many films with many different themes and in many different styles, I was hoping for a project later in life from which I could better understand what my personal style was.” he emphasized.

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“Once I had a draft, I must have rewritten it 300 times, hoping that each rewrite would improve it, even by 0.5%,” he noted.

Last September, Coppola explained how Rome inspired him for the film “Megalopolis” by writing on Instagram: “How often do I think about Ancient Rome? Fair enough, as the Roman Republic served as an example for my country, America and its institutions, and was the inspiration for my upcoming film “Megalopolis”.

“The fascination which the Roman Republic holds for me is based on the struggle between the political parties in which the interest of the Republic yielded to the ambitions of a few powerful men who embraced the aims of the political parties in order to create their own future and power by relying on the armed forces for the attainment of these ends, by giving the finishing blow to a Constitution which has already been shaken to its fall” he added.