Spike Lee shares his reaction to footage he saw of Francis Ford Coppola’s MEGALOPOLIS

Director Spike Lee was invited to watch 30 minutes of footage by Francis Ford Coppolait’s the next movie Megalopolis. After seeing the footage, Lee took to social media to share his reaction and was quite impressed. He said:

I just spent the day with one of my cinema fathers-FROM the great FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA. I flew down from New York this mawnin’ to HOTLANTA. Francis was kind to sign a bunch of GODFATHER I and Il posters and books. But Da BOOMDIGGITTY was Francis screened 30 minutes of his new play “MEGALOPIS” for me. OH MY GOD. AMAZING.👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 Thanks Francis, peace and love, Spike

Like all of you, I have been extremely curious about this film and what it will offer. It’s great to see an early reaction from someone who isn’t involved with the film and it’s exciting that they were so excited about it!

The film tells the story of an architect who dreams of a utopian version of New York in the near future and his battle with the conservative mayor, who has other ideas about the city. Contained within the epic are a myriad of storylines and characters. “The fate of Rome haunts a modern world unable to solve its social problems in this epic story of political ambition.”

Coppola described the film as “a love story. A woman is torn between loyalties to two men. But not just two men. Every man comes with a philosophical principle. One of hers is her father who raised her, who taught her Latin in her womb and is devoted to a much more classical view of society, the kind of view of Marcus Aurelius. The other, who is the lover, is the father’s enemy but is dedicated to a much more progressive ‘Let’s jump into the future, let’s jump over all this garbage that has contaminated humanity for 10,000 years. We discover what we really are, that we are an enlightened, friendly, joyful species.’”

Coppola has also previously said of the film, “What would make me really happy? It’s not winning a lot of Oscars because I already have a lot and maybe more than I deserve. And it’s not that I make a lot of money, although I think as time goes on it will make a lot of money because whatever people keep looking at and finding new stuff, that makes money. [Megalopolis] and the society we live in is the only one available to us? How can we improve it? Education, mental health? What the film is really proposing is that utopia is not a place. Is how can we improve everything? Every year, come up with two, three or four ideas that make it better.”

“I would smile in my grave if I thought something like this happened, because people talk about what movies really mean if you give them something. If you encouraged people to discuss marriage, education, health, justice, opportunity, freedom and all of that wonderful things that human beings have conceived. And ask yourself the question, how can we make it even better? That would be great. Because I bet they would do it better if they had that conversation.”

The cast of the film includes Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Schwartzmann, Laurence Fishburne, Grace Vander Waal, Kathryn Hunter, James Remar, Thalia Shire. Dustin Hoffmann, Cloe Fineman (Saturday night live), Isabelle Kusman (licorice pizza), DB Sweeney (Fire in the sky), Bailey IvesAND Giancarlo Esposito.