By It’s been a while since the name Francis Ford Coppola has inspired visions of greatness, but I think deep down everyone wants to believe that the creator of The Godfather has still got it. With each new project, there is hope that maybe it will be the one to bring him back into the spotlight. Sure, it’s been a few decades of disappointment, but maybe.
The next maybe brings Coppola back to the story that really made him famous in the first place, kind of. His next project, which is thus far untitled, is a film about an Italian-American family from the 1930s to the 1960s. Given that it took two excellent films and one not-so-excellent one for Coppola to tell the (singular) decade spanning Godfather trilogy, I’m curious how large scale this project will be. Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America covers a similar historical period and is famous for its 269 minute runtime (which was slashed to 139 for its American theatrical release), and I’m curious if that will be a benchmark in terms of both quality and quantity.
There’s not much else to go on other than the fact that longtime collaborator Fred Roos will be producing and it will be cast by Courtney Bright and Nicole Daniels, who worked on Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring. Those things do nothing to inspire confidence or instill dread, so we’ll have to wait for more information before making any kinds of judgments, but you know what, Coppola’s pretty good at Italian-American family dramas. Maybe this will be the one.
Maybe.
[Via The Hollywood Reporter]