I recently watched The Godfather 1 and 2 for the first time as an adult and was floored by the two movies (really a single movie, broken into two parts). A complete tragedy executed to perfection. The full arc of the tragic downfall of a man, like something out of the Greek tragedies or Shakespeare.

I then made the horrible mistake of watching Godfather 3, which basically seemed to have 90s romantic comedy vibe with Al Pacino not playing Michael Coreleone but simply playing Al Pacino. What then surprised me even more was that the film received pretty favorable reviews at the time. Wow how we can be blinded in the moment!

I would very much hope that Mr. Coppola achieves something grand, especially in the current era of horrible movies, but color me skeptical based upon his later work. I could understand if executives are wary as well.

On a side note, since you mentioned him, Mallick’s recent A Hidden Life is an absolute masterpiece. It may be my favorite movie (need time for it to sink in). But what a powerful depiction of conscience & struggle. One thing I often wonder about: who is the main character, the man or his wife? Whose Hidden Life is really the subject of the movie?

People always say that about Godfather 3, I always wonder if it’s just a thing to say because he put his own daughter in a lead role. Like the critics, I liked it. Not nearly as much as II or I but still. It is a nineties movie though, it’s even different media wise, less grainy. Casting his own daughter when I think, Winona Ryder, dropped out was very nepotistic; and she’s a better director than actress. For me Garcia steals the show though, channeling Sonny and the ‘they pull me back in scene’ is amazing. I don’t know what my point is..

Bingo. Gf3 is a good movie, the problem is Gf1 and Gf2 are to put it simply, masterpieces. Short of a masterpiece, there was no way for Gf3 to compete.

For what it is worth, the recent remaster of Gf3, Gf3: Coda improves the storytelling of Gf3 significantly and I would say makes the movie considerably better, but it is still not competitive with Gf1 and Gf2. That said, I really recommend everyone watch the Coda remaster at this point and do it with an open mind.

> Casting his own daughter when I think, Winona Ryder, dropped out was very nepotistic; and she’s a better director than actress.

While I'll agree Sofia is a much better director than actress (she’s a truly outstanding writer and director) and that Ryder would have been better (Coppola later did work with her on Bram Stoker's Dracula), I’m not going to be mad at him casting his daughter or even blaming it on nepotism. After all, all the previous examples of nepotism, like working with his father, his sister, his brother-in-law, his nephew, etc worked out quite well. Like, the whole Coppola family thing is that they all work together and hire each other. She wasn’t a great actress, but I don’t think she’s want sunk that film. The truth is, any film in a series coming 15 years after two of the greatest films of all time (and the rare sequel that is arguably better than the original, which was already a masterpiece) would have an impossible standard to live up to. Even if Godfather III was a perfect film, I’m not sure it could live up to the hype that the first two carried, especially after 15 years.

And it wasn’t a perfect film. It’s not a piece of garbage but it isn’t in the same league as the other two, which again, are two of the absolute greatest films of all time. But seeing how successful nepotism has been for the Coppola family, I think blaming his teenage daughter is fairly weak.

There have probably been better character analysis done, but I think Sofia did not have the time to "soak in" GF1 and GF2 to give her character any specific nuance that we could love. It's difficult to separate "blandness" and purity in her rendering of the daughter of the godfather, but consider also this: she was not a seasoned actress, and there were very few ways you could interpret this role in a great and memorable way (because of the unreachable success of GF1 and GF2, as others mentioned).

TL; DR: it was a hard first role for a young actress

Hard role or not, first-time actress or not, and all nuance aside, she just acted terribly, full stop. Her acting was very nearly the definition of high school theater mediocrity and simply awful in virtually every scene. It would have looked bad in a completely average movie with completely average (but not bad) actors. But to watch her "act" in scenes with people like Pacino and in the case of this movie, especially Andy Garcia, it's just actoral travesty.

I don't mind the Godfather III. It's not nearly the movie its predecessors were but it's also not nearly as bad as some claim, but during any scene with Coppola in it, I literally need to skip forward to avoid the sheer cringe effect she creates with her dialogue, facial expressions and gestures..

I didn't like her either, but I was trying to explain why it's not a good performance.

Should someone have spotted this and replaced her? Maybe, but her scenes were not crucial enough for anyone to care to tell the director.

I don't think it's because he put his daughter in it. Godfather I & II is based on the Book written by Mario Puzzo. Godfather III is not based on the book. Think of it from the POV of - wow, I & II were quite successful so let's milk it and see if we can make money with another sequel.

>Godfather I & II is based on the Book written by Mario Puzzo.

ever read the book? It's a dog.

It’s very good pulp with at least one pointless side plot. If you’ve never read something that’s actually bad you might consider that a dog.

Ok I guess dog is overstating it when there are Mack Bolan books out there, but on the other hand it is definitely not that you can point to the movies and say Well of course they're masterpieces! Just look at the book!

I don't think it's that bad, but it definitely gives the impression of having been written with the intention of it being made into a movie.

It's worth reading to appreciate the many modifications that transformed it from a mediocre novel into a brilliant movie.

I disagree, I thought the book was excellent.

I also liked Godfather III, but not as much as I or II.

I see the third part as a portrayal of changing of times. Gone are the days of past, the time has changed, and so has characters and the story.

It’s a good movie if you don’t hold it up to part I and II.

> the two movies (really a single movie, broken into two parts)

Really? How so?

Godfather I tells a single coherent story about a power struggle.

Godfather II tells two stories, but neither of them relates to the story from I except in that they involve the same people at different stages of their lives.

I think part 3 really missed Robert Duvall. I don't think he gets enough credit for his role and always seems to get shadowed by the other big name actors. It's been a while since I watched it last, but I do remember George Hamilton as the (pseudo-)consigliere just wasn't it.

Every era is an era of horrible films. That’s Sturgeon’s law for you.

Looking at the 2010s as a whole, we got to watch some amazing films.

We got great hard sci-fi like Gravity, Arrival, Ex Machina. The coming of age genre saw entries like Ladybird, Eighth Grade and Booksmart. Animation reached new heights with films like Inside Out, Spider-Man into the Spiderverse, and Kubo and the Two Strings.

We got comedies like The Artist, Grand Budapest Hotel, Death of Stalin, and Jojo Rabbit. Dramas like Moonlight, Fences, Spotlight, Parasite, Blue Jasmine.

Even in the ever-popular comic book genre, we got Logan and Joker playing at a very different level.

But also, it was the decade of the MCU. Let’s not underestimate what Disney has achieved with that — one big overarching story spanning over twenty films, bringing much deeper character development and more serious themes than what we’d gotten used to from blockbusters.

Not to understate what Disney did, but I feel like most of their characters don't have much depth.

I recently rewatched 12 angry men, and was surprised at how quickly and efficiently they introduced 12 characters. Off-hand remark by one character, an expression by another, the way they stood and moved around; in around 5 seconds you knew the characters without even knowing their names.

Contrast to Marvel's characters, which have hours of development each, yet don't really feel alive. All of them have tragic backstory, all of them are heroic in the same way, most of the male characters are snarky/sarcastic/have big egos.

>We got great hard sci-fi like Gravity, Arrival, Ex Machina

Those were terrible movies and not hard sci-fi. Okay, maybe Arrival was watchable.

Gravity is not hard sci-fi. It looks amazing in 3D but it violates the laws of physics in every way possible.

I found it quite compelling. It’s common for sci-fi films to violate our current understanding of physics, but to just explain it away as a new discovery in physics (think star trek’s warp drive). Others like Star Wars don’t even bother to explain anything about how their ships fly, enter atmospheres, etc.

What was unique about Gravity was that it was sci-if but set it our universe and in our contemporary time period. It at least tried to operate within the constraints of current inventory of space hardware. You are non-space-enthusiast it was amazing.

Yeah. Wall-E had more realistic use of a fire extinguisher to move in space.

> especially in the current era of horrible movies

Isn't this always the case? Have we ever had an era when people thought "glad to be in the current era of great movies"?

I don’t know about movies, but a few years back, it seemed widely accepted that we were in a golden era of television. During the penultimate season of Game of Thrones maybe.

I distinctly remember feeling like 1995 was absolutely amazing year for cinema.

Toy story, Braveheart, Apollo 13, Usual Suspects, Heat, Casino, Seven, Clueless, 12 Monkeys, Babe, Get Shorty, Leaving Las Vegas, etc.

A great time to be going to the Cinema.

You remember the recent terrible films and forget the old terrible films.

Also works for TV, music, books, plays.

Imagine all the crap that was on at the same time as Shakespeare that no one remembered 5 years later, let alone 400

Yes, the 1970s. Even the uncompromising Pauline Kael recognized what was essentially the United Artists/auteur era as a sort of magical time. But it was relatively brief.

We must have seen different movies. Whose downfall?

Michael's. He's a different person by the end of the first movie.

He is different, but not worse.

I guess here's where we get into subjective territory :) But I think the moral downfall interpretation is supported by one of the final scenes where he lied to his wife about not having killed his sister's husband.

> It must be really off the wall for a studio to not invest in that.

Not necessarily, it's gotten much harder to produce projects that aren't commercially marketable IP like Marvel.

I listened to a Matt Damon interview recently and he basically wondered aloud if he could get a studio to make Good Will Hunting today, which made me sad to hear. Many of his early movies were low to mid-budget one-off dramas, which aren't really getting made anymore.

If you can't license your film's characters for games/toys/food/whatever, your project is a lot harder to pitch to execs in 2022.

The middle-ground movies like "Good Will Hunting" are, unfortunately, pretty much dead in the water right now, they have been since before the pandemic (I'd say since the early 2010s). Some directors and producers in France (because the same thing has been happening there, at another level) tried to do something about it by staging some protests around 2012-2013 if I'm not mistaken, this interview [1] (in French) from 2013 with Pascale Ferran, one of the main persons behind the movement, will add more details. Of course that nothing came out of the whole protest movement.

There is some (I think) temporary help from streaming and especially from Netflix when it comes to this type of movies ("The Irishman" is just one example), but, again and imo, I think this is just temporary and that in the long term Netflix and its kin will also give up on this type of movies. And, of course, you could say (like Scorsese himself sort of did) that watching movies on a TV screen is not really "watching movies", and I'm with Scorsese on that.

[1] https://www.afcinema.com/Pascale-Ferran-Je-m-inquiete-pour-l...

IMDB shows The Irishman budget as a 159 million.

I would suspect it did not make that money back. The studios are in the movie business and not the lighting money on fire business.

I think we have just seen a fundamental shift in the tastes of the 18-35 demographic and what kind of movies they want to see. Quality fast food type movies as opposed to a full sit down multiple course meal type movie.

I love Coppola but I wouldn't want to invest in this project either at this point.

The consumption model has changed, and the tastes reflect that. If you're going to a movie theater a couple times a month, you always have to pick from what's available and what sounds good. If there always new, high quality stuff available at home, you'll pick what you're already invested in. That could be Marvel movies, or it could be a tv show you already know you like.

Affleck said (in a recent interview with Damon) that he wouldn't be able to make Argo today as a movie. It'd have to be a six hour mini-series.

> Matt Damon interview

Would you happen to know where to find that interview?

potential mirror https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/ozlv98/matt_damon_e...

it seems it was in the 'hot ones' show

> I am shocked he has to put his own money into this movie. It must be really off the wall for a studio to not invest in that.

Coppola had to mortgage everything to do Apocalypse Now, and that was following the very successful Godfather II. This is probably why he's so confident about making a big bet on himself again while doing an "off the wall" film. It worked out well previously.

(Megalopolis honestly sounds like a much lower risk thing than sending late seventies Dennis Hopper and Marlon Brando into the jungle...)

This.

There is a great documentary about the troubled production of Apocalypse Now: Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse[0]

After watching this, that 100M bet will look like a trifle.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Darkness:_A_Filmmake...

Spielberg has said a few times that it is hard for him to raise money for projects. Other big names have said the same thing.

Studios want superhero movies or reboots and nothing else.

Streaming has hollowed out the non-blockbuster market, so studios need to quite literally go big or go home. Going big means the movie needs to have spectacle that brings people to the theater, which generally means huge cgi budgets that tv series could never replicate on a per frame basis. Superhero movies (and remakes) are exploiting preexisting social capital of franchises to be as successful as they are, otherwise it is really difficult to justify dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on producing and marketing a blockbuster spectacle nobody has ever heard of when marvel and other studios are dropping movies with familiar and popular IP constantly.

Superhero movies aren't even cheap, is the sad thing. Dune cost less than Black Widow to make, and that's a fairly wide-scope space opera with lots of practical effects making up large amounts of the movie.

Superhero movies are the current optima in (audience appetite, profit, time to delivery, box office saturation / crowding out competition). It makes business sense, it just sucks for those trying to do something different, as it sucks the money out of the system. Opportunity cost favors capes.

Hollywood is going to change dramatically over the next few decades as more projects move to post production rendering pipelines and the entire film process gets upended. Maybe this will provide much needed air to those seeking to do new and unusual things.

The international market is the main reason. These type of movies play well globally and are easily understood compared to dialogue heavy / complex story / local knowledge required stories.

I'd like to see some statistics for that. IIRC most of the big marvel/dc comic movies did significantly better in the US than outside. It sort of makes sense as well, those comic books were not as big for the generation that is 30+ now in those other countries.

The too complex dialogue argument also doesn't really make sense considering that movies get translated in the biggest overseas markets.

Stats:

https://www.boxofficepro.com/box-office-rewind-a-history-of-...

Marvel films make most of their money internationally, the bigger the film, the bigger the foreign share. E.g. Infinity War $357.1 million domestically and $1.2 billion worldwide.

> The too complex dialogue argument also doesn't really make sense considering that movies get translated in the biggest overseas markets.

The argument is that it's much easier to get plot, jokes, and moderate character development across in translation (and more convincing to dub!) with a base script that uses simpler English.

Comic books have little to do with it. Guardians of the Galaxy never sold many books, and only to pretty hardcore fans.

Movie theatres in the Netflix era need spectacular and bombastic films in order to draw a crowd. The kind of stuff that doesn't translate well on a 55 inch TV.

Dune is such a movie and yet Villeneuve basically had to beg and wait for the studio to greenlight Part II. This should have been shot back to back as it's simply an unfinished film in its current form.

> had to beg and wait

It was renewed within a month of release.

This is a franchise where individual movies cost $150m+ to make. I can see why a studio wouldn't be willing to greenlight all of it at one go, especially given how the previous adaptation attempt at the same franchise was not received well.

> as more projects move to post production rendering pipelines

I don't understand - what are they currently doing if not rendering in post-production?

Not so sure about post-production rendering, if anything movies are moving to real-time rendered CGI environments [1]. Unreal/Epic have been a big player in this space.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk

In practice, for digital production backgrounds like the volume they actually set the part of the screens that intersect the camera frustum to a green screen in case they want to change anything in post. The main benefit you get from digital volumes like this is immersion for the actors and lighting conditions that match the CG environment.

It’s unclear to me why that transition would mean that writers/directors/storytellers would win. Lower costs make creative risks more viable?

Eventually teenage kids will be making Star Wars at home. Or Star Wars meets Scarface.

GPUs will surpass 2010's Pixar. This, coupled with real time motion capture and photogrammetry, will enable more creativity than ever before from more people than have ever been involved. A democratization that even Disney won't be able to counter.

But to directly answer your question, the process of writing moves off the text editor and directly into the production fold. Changes can be made dynamically or even in post. We'll see tools for graphical story arcs, character development radar charts, backstories, and more as these things all morph into real time activities.

> Eventually teenage kids will be making Star Wars at home.

Perhaps, but the same was promised when camera and editing equipment became commodities. There are a few examples like the Blair Witch Project, or Tangerine, a great movie which was filmed with two iPhones. But in general successful movies are still expensively made by professional teams.

The problem is: Even if the technical equipment is cheap, successful movies still require time and talent and lots of hard work.

I would bet if young people had the kinds of rents and the accompanying amount of slack time we had in the early 90s, paired with modern tech, tons of good movies and bands would be created.

But they don't and the creativity of the young, in many fields, is being wasted.

You can't compare making music and movies.

A talented person can make groundbreaking music using only a guitar or a piano. With a mac, a microphone, a midi-keyboard and enough skill, one person can produce professional level recordings. Technology is not the limiting factor, it has been available for decades.

Movies are different - they require so many more specialized skills and resources. You need actors, sets, lighting, music, sound design, costume design, a script etc. It is great the technology becomes more affordable, but putting your neighbor into a motion-capture suit will not make him a great actor and having Final Cut available on a mac will not make you into a talented movie editor.

Just compare the number of credits on you favorite piece of music compared to you favorite movie.

There wasn’t more slack time in the 90s, but there wasn’t time wasted on social media either.

Young people need to work a lot more hours to pay rent now and whether it is because sharing places is less popular or not, there are far less places to rent for groups. There are now far more 1 or 2 bedroom apartments and many larger houses have been divided. Practice spaces and studio spaces are also much, much more difficult to come by. In city after city, what used to be dirt cheap warehouses are now pricey condos and fancy apartments.

As creative tools evolve (Instagram -> TikTok, Minecraft -> Roblox / VRChat marketplaces, Kickstarter -> Patreon subscriptions and communities, Twitch ...), there may be a wealth of new opportunities for young people to start making money being creative.

There wasn't an easy way to build content and find an audience. Now there's an ever increasing opportunity.

I think we're early in this game and only getting our first look at what's to come.

I believe it. That’s wonderful. Though I’m teaching now - in a previous life, I was a Local 600 2nd AC. The storytelling industry fascinates me, but I would love to see user generated, interactive fiction become prominent. All the better if talent can be the central stakeholder.

Unreal/Epic got a shout out above. Can you point out anyone else who is working seriously in the space?

That’s exciting.

> I was a Local 600 2nd AC

That's awesome! I know a bunch of IATSE folks and they're all super cool.

It's such a unique industry, and the excitement on set is totally palpable.

> The storytelling industry fascinates me, but I would love to see user generated, interactive fiction

I'm working on exactly this now! Collaborative motion capture and environmental control with audience participation. I haven't launched publicly yet, but used to demo my progress with a live audience on Twitch. They loved it, but I think I loved it even more.

This workflow beats film by miles and opens up so many new and unique storytelling techniques that have never been explored. It's incredibly fun, too.

I bought the domain name "storyteller.io" to launch with. I should be releasing two minor tangentially-related pieces this week: Twitch TTS for audience monetization and a 3D volumetric/voxel camera that can be injected directly into games. The motion capture, face animation, and interactive world pieces should follow early next quarter. (I need more people - I'm barely getting sleep and keep missing my own deadlines.)

I've had a few people that heard my "this is the future" pitch tell me I should join YC, but I'm trying to release more stuff before the deadline. As a backup I have animated "deepfake as a service" versions of Garry Tan, Justin Kan, Alexis Ohanian, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, and Palmer Luckey and was thinking of cold emailing them. You type something, and they say it in a video. As a service. It's stupid, but I think it'd get their attention.

I want this because I'm a storyteller that hates film. Not the creatives and the excitement, just the mundane, repeatable work. And the projects that seem out of reach for budget and practical reasons.

Great idea. In the near future, it may be possible to type a message and have your persona actually get on a call and say it.

I wish you the best of luck, and will try to check in once in a while.

Get some sleep.

You keep making this argument and it’s no more realistic than the “anyone can code” if you come up with a low code environment.

We saw the results of the low code movement with impossible to maintain Access and FoxPro “applications” and the Excel spreadsheets with VB.

I have all of the equipment I need to make a great movie or music video - a 4K camera, a computer, and movie and music editing software. I technical know how to use all of the software well enough to make videos and to mix music.

But I don’t have the talent.

You have people like Blumhouse , Tyler Perry, and Jordan Peele who whether you like their movies or not, know how to make successful low budget movies. Not every YouTuber can.

We’ve seen democraticization of creating music, books, and movies. But still all of the money is being made by a relatively few.

GPUs have already surpassed 2010s Pixar’s. The Intel Mac Pro and the M1 Pro Macs can already do amazing things - in the hands of the right people.

Isn't TikTok an early indication of the power of creative tooling being put in people's hands? Literally millions of people out there being creative on a daily basis. And we're so early in this game.

Apple is just dumb hardware. It's not helping any more than a pencil. Yes, you can make art with it, but in my mind it's like programming with a hole punch. We can now build tools that translate the thoughts in your head directly into media. And even improve upon them. This wasn't possible just five years ago.

Like I said before, let's come back in ten years and see.

I think we are in violent agreement about how technology makes being creative easier. My contention is that it’s not technology that’s the limiting factor to being successful.

I have the know how and equipment to edit videos. I can edit “well enough” for internal videos and demos for YouTube. You put those same tools in the hands of someone with talent, they can be amazing tools.

Just like WordPress in my hands will still look like a table driven layout from the 2000s

It’s hard to break into any media industry well enough to make it a sustainable business. It’s about how do you stand out in the crowd and get people to pay you money? It’s not better technology that’s going to make it easier to find “one thousand true fans” that will give you money and it takes a lot more than one thousand true fans to make it based on just advertising.

Could be true. Some of the last star wars feel like the storyline was made by teenagers.

It's not about costs, it's about getting tight feedback loops because you can see exactly what the camera is filming straight away instead of having to wait for the green screen -> post processing loop.

I think OP means that more content will be the Mandolorian where all the backgrounds and sets are virtual, perhaps.

That's the opposite of post-production rendering isn't it?

Studios want profit.

When only superheroes or reboots are profitable, that's what they'll finance.

Not sure if Netflix and the other streamers work differently.

>Not sure if Netflix and the other streamers work differently.

Right now they work differently. They are throwing around big money for the middle tier budget movie--not blockbusters and not small indies.

But all it takes is for the data to suggest that its better to make 5 Red Notices than 10 middle budge adult movies and they'll just stop making them.

Or they were waiting for a hero with power to fix things.

Superhero films have confused the ideas of what heroes and power are.

Tell me what you think about what you think Trudeau is doing in Canada next.

Two thoughts.

1. If we know what a government can do when it’s not on “your side” whichever your side is, then why do most people on HN always want the “government to pass a law to do $x to private businesses” giving the government more power?

2. Exactly what does “being American mean”? I bet you dollars to donuts when you talk to your parents about the good old days, the story is different than talking to my parents who grew up in the segregated south.

For me being American means getting away from the culture that caused injustices in the South and moving towards a kinder future for everyone. And then the villain tried to take us back there.

But democracy prevailed and for that I am hopeful.

The point of my comment was that all we had were superhero movies talking about right and wrong but it was so silly and childish and on the surface that it didn't do the real work that great movies do of making people examine what is really good and what is evil.

You mean the same culture where statistically to this day minorities get harsher sentences for the same crime than non minorities and that the “War on Drugs” became the “War on Black People” and when drugs started affecting rural America it became a “disease” that needs “treatment” and not “caused by moral failings” like it was in the “inner city”. Even the idea that the crack got harsher punishment than the same amount of cocaine is evidence that not much has changed.

It’s not a Republican vs Democratic thing. The Clintons and Biden were big proponents of the “War on Crime” and it was disproportionately aimed at minorities.

I have no idea why criminal justice reform didn’t gain more traction. The mainstream Republicans on the national level supported it as well as Democrats - even up to Trump before.

Malick isn't the best example here. Tree of Life was made for around $30 mil and his most recent, A Hidden Life was made for in the vicinity of $8 mil. In the context of our current blockbuster climate where the latest Bond movie costs upwards of $300 mil to make, I wouldn't call Malick's films "big expensive movies," and I certainly wouldn't compare it to Coppola's $120 mil+ price tag. Hollywood has shown that it will only give that kind of money to films that fit a strict, suffocatingly rigorous formula (i.e. existing IP, car chases, explosions, world-saving heroes, etc). It most certainly will not fund a project to the tune of seven figures based on an original idea that has been described as “a love story that is also a philosophical investigation of the nature of man.” If you don't have a remake or reboot of an existing IP, you're not getting funded, period.

Also Malick is a consistent awards contender in years where he releases a movie. Tree of Life is one of the most critically acclaimed films this century and studios like to invest in critical prestige when they can, given a reasonable budget. His movies also generally make their money back. This is also why networks will let TV shows like Crazy Ex Girlfriend and The Americans go on towards a natural conclusion, instead of canceling immediately, even if viewership is low. Coppola simply does not have that reputation anymore. In fact, I think he lost it all the way back in the early 80s. After Apocalypse Now, he failed to make a movie that captured unanimous critical favor like his string of hits in the 70s. Four of his last five movies have been largely panned. His 1996 flop, "Jack," is one of the worst movies I've ever seen and a lot of other critics agreed. A movie like that typically ends careers. He does not have the cachet to warrant an investment of $120 mill on an idea that appears at first glance to have dubious mainstream popular appeal. With that said, I would certainly see it.

Coppola is a big name but in no way a safe bet. His output is inconsistent and his biggest hits are 40 years ago. And based on the interview, it seems he has a hard time explaining what the movie is even about, which is no-go for Hollywood. If you cant pitch a movie in a sentence you can't market it.

Coppola's 82, so aside from the usual troubles directors have getting projects, you gotta figure studios are also gonna be kind of nervous funding a guy with a non-trivial chance of dying or being otherwise incapacitated during the course of making the film, leaving them with a half finished project.

I've noticed that for the past decade or so, Hollywood has really only been interested in doing either sequels or remakes.

Ever since streaming and, more recently, the pandemic, has affected box office numbers, they seem to be playing it very safe in terms of getting a decent ROI.

One of the last few directors that makes original films (Christopher Nolan) has only had success, I believe, because he's made recent hits. Studios are more willing to take a chance on him. Francis, on the other hand, hasn't had a successful hit since the 1970's. While no one doubts his greatness, one could argue he has peaked and his name doesn't carry the cache that directors like Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino have.

What are the big expensive movies that Terrence Malick is making? His budgets have consistently shrunk over the years and his last film didn't even cost $10m. Coppola could easily get that. He just can't get $120m without giving up some creative control and he doesn't want to do that.

OT but Tree of Life was definitely a critical hit in 2010.

Maybe something to do with creative control/strings attached/freedom from studio accounting practices?