Francis Ford Coppola has decided to reveal how often he thinks about the Roman Empire.
The filmmaker took to Instagram Friday to join the TikTok trend by asking himself the viral question: “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?”
“Quite a lot,” Coppola wrote in response. “As the Roman Republic served as the example for my country America and its institutions, and was the inspiration for my upcoming film [Megalopolis].”
The trend has been making its rounds on social media in recent weeks, where women ask men in their lives how often they think about the Roman Empire. Most men respond, claiming that they think about it either daily or several times a week.
The Godfather director added, “My fascination with the Roman Republic is based on the struggle between the political parties during which the interest of the Republic yielded to the ambitions of a few powerful men who espoused the aims of political parties to establish their own fortunes and authority by relying upon armed forces to achieve those ends, dealing the final blow to a constitution already tottering to its fall.”
Megalopolis centers on an architect who seeks to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster. The cast includes Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, Talia Shire, Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Schwartzman and Dustin Hoffman.
The sci-fi drama has been a passion project, decades in the making, for Coppola. In 2021, the news broke that he was even self-financing the $120 million film.
In March 2022, he told The Hollywood Reporter that he was putting his own money into the film in order to make it his own way. “There’s a certain way everyone thinks a film should be, and it rubs against the grain if you have another idea,” Coppola said at the time. “People can be very unaccepting, but sometimes the other idea represents what’s coming in the future. That is worthy of being considered.”
Though Megalopolis doesn’t have a specific release date yet, it is expected to come out next year.
