Giancarlo Esposito Joins Francis Ford Coppola’s Troubling Megalopolis Production

We’re still a ways away from the premiere of Megalopolis, the buzzed-about new film from Francis Ford Coppola. After already amassing a pretty epic ensemble cast, it looks like that list now includes one fan-favorite actor. On Monday, reports revealed that Breaking Bad and Star Wars: The Mandalorian star Giancarlo Esposito is joining the cast of the film in a currently-unknown role. He will join an ensemble cast that already includes Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Chloe Fineman, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, DB Sweeney, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Bailey Ives, Grace Vanderwaal, and James Remar.

Megalopolis has recently made headlines for reports that the film’s budget has ballooned significantly, and entire departments on the film’s crew have either fired or resigned. The reported budget exceeds $120 million.

What is Megalopolis about?

The plot of Megalopolis largely remains under wraps, but the film is reportedly set in an alternate reality version of New York City dubbed “New Rome.” In the film, the fate of Rome haunts a modern world unable to solve its own social problems in this epic story of political ambition, genius and conflicted love. The film is somewhat of a passion project for Coppola, who has been financing almost all of the film’s $100 million budget himself.

“What would make me really happy? It’s not winning a lot of Oscars because I already have a lot and maybe more than I deserve,” Coppola said of his career in an interview last year. “And it’s not that I make a lot of money, although I think over time it will make a lot of money because anything that the people keep looking at and finding new things, that makes money. So somewhere down the line, way after I’m gone, all I want is for them to discuss [Megalopolis] and, is the society we’re living in the only one available to us? How can we make it better? Education, mental health? What the movie really is proposing is that utopia is not a place. It’s how can we make everything better? Every year, come up with two, three or four ideas that make it better.”

“I would be smiling in my grave if I thought something like that happened, because people talk about what movies really mean if you give them something,” Coppola continued. “If you encouraged people to discuss marriage and education and health and justice and opportunities and freedom and all these wonderful things that human beings have conceived of. And ask the question, how can we make it even better? That would be great. Because I bet you they would make it better if they had that conversation.”

What do you think of Giancarlo Esposito joining the cast of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!