Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, best known for directing The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, has been hospitalised in Rome, Italy for a scheduled medical treatment. The 85-year-old director travelled to Italy after concluding a six-city U.S. tour promoting his upcoming film Megalopolis, a self-funded and highly anticipated cinematic venture.
Coppola’s final U.S. appearance took place at the iconic Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, where he hosted a special screening of Megalopolis followed by a live Q&A session. The event marked the end of his promotional tour before flying to Rome for a pre-planned medical checkup.
In an emotional conversation with SF Gate, Coppola reflected on his life and recent personal loss, sharing, “I am 85. I lost my wife [Eleanor Coppola] a year ago, around this time. But my attitude for death is that I always lived my life so that when I was at the moment approaching death, I wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, I wish I had done this and I wish I had done that.’ Instead, I say to myself, ‘I got to do this.’”
Megalopolis, both directed and written by Coppola, features a stellar cast including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Laurence Fishburne, Dustin Hoffman, and many others. The film was initially released in 2024 but recently had a re-release with deleted scenes added to enhance its surreal tone. The re-release is being seen by many as Coppola’s boldest artistic statement since his earlier classics.
Despite initial criticism, the director remains optimistic. Speaking with G2, Coppola commented, “Apocalypse Now was a big flop, it got terrible reviews, everyone said it was the worst movie ever made. And yet people never stopped going to see it. The same thing is now happening with Megalopolis.”
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