> 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...)