Naturally, Megalopolis is coming for mega screens

It shouldn’t come as news that a huge, potentially final movie by one of the world’s great filmmakers—one that literally has the word “mega” in the title—is set to open on some of cinema’s biggest screens. And yet!

Ahead of its big Cannes premiere today, IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond announced that Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis would play on the company’s screens, even though the film has yet to secure a U.S. distributor. “One of the things that we pride ourselves on is being filmmaker-friendly. So we’ve committed to Francis to do a global IMAX release,” Gelfond said at a press event today (via The Hollywood Reporter).

That promise, however, does come with a few, vaguely backhanded caveats. “It’ll probably be a limited release rather than on all the screens in the world; it almost certainly won’t be that,” Gelfond said (via Deadline). While Coppola’s notoriously hard-to-sell film recently secured several international buyers, the CEO said he was waiting on the U.S. to “come up with a coordinated global strategy” for its release. No date has been set yet. Why not just blast Adam Driver and his time-stop powers out to everyone? The movie is mostly for “cinephiles and fans of Coppola,” Gelfond answered when asked about its presumed audience. Oof.

After this week, there may be even less of the latter. In a new report, The Guardian published allegations that the director tried to kiss some female extras on set to “get them in the mood,” along with other Coppola-esque chaos surrounding the sanctity of his directorial vision that caused multiple crew members to walk out.

For the cinephiles, on the other hand, the film’s teaser trailer (below) does look pretty stunning. The project—which stars Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, and more—is a Roman-inspired sci-fi epic, following a conflict between an idealistic architect (Driver), a corrupt mayor (Esposito), and the latter’s socialite daughter (Emmanuel) who’s caught between them. We’ll see how early audiences react when the film is finally loosed upon the world later today at the festival, but if you’re going to see it at all, it does seem worth it to experience whatever it ends up being on the biggest screen possible.

If Coppola isn’t your cup of tea, don’t worry; there are a bunch of other exciting IMAX releases coming next year. Here’s the tentative 2025 slate (via IndieWire):

Captain America: Brave New World (Disney/Marvel), Feb 15

Untitled Ryan Coogler/Michael B. Jordan film (WB), Mar 7

Thunderbolts* (Disney/Marvel), May 2

Flowervale Street (WB), May 16

Mission: Impossible 8 (Paramount), May 23

How To Train Your Dragon (Universal), Jun 13

Untitled Formula One (Apple/Distributor TBC), Jun 27

Superman: Legacy (WB/DC), Jul 11

The Fantastic Four (Disney/Marvel), Jul 25

Mercy (MGM/Amazon), Aug 15

The Bride! (WB), Oct 3

TRON: Ares (Disney), Oct 10

Blade (Disney/Marvel), Nov 7

Chinese New Year, title TBC, w/o Jan 29