Francis Ford Coppola's New Film Megalopolis in Turmoil With Huge Budget, "Absolute Madness" on Set

Megalopolis is a movie Francis Ford Coppola has been working on for over 40 years and now, the production appears to be in shambles. After the auteur began writing it in the early-1980s, principal photography first began last year once Coppola decided to use his own money to finance the project. Now, new trade reports suggest the movie has been left without its entire art department due to a wave of hirings and resignations.

According to a new report from The Hollywood Reporter, Coppola fired the entire visual effects department shortly before the holidays. Now that Hollywood is beginning to pick work back up for the year, it's now said production designer Beth Mickle and supervising art director David Scott have now left the department, effectively stripping the film of its entire art department.

"The Art Directors Guild supports all Art Departments to ensure proper staffing and scheduling and is currently looking into the situation with Megalopolis to determine the next steps,"  the Art Directors Guild said in a statement obtained by the trade. "We have no further comment at this point."

Coppola reportedly planned to spend $120 million on the production, though ballooning costs have now exacerbated that amount. "There's no good answer here," one source added in the report. "[Coppola] is going to spend a lot more money than he intended. You can imagine how much he's already got invested. It would be a very bitter pill not to finish it."

Another source of the trade said the firings were a blessing because "it was absolute madness, being on set."

Despite the turnover, Coppola is reportedly hiring new staff for the project so that it can finish the last few weeks of principal photography.

"There's a certain way everyone thinks a film should be, and it rubs against the grain if you have another idea," the filmmaker said of the film last winter. "People can be very unaccepting, but sometimes the other idea represents what's coming in the future. That is worthy of being considered."