Shia LaBeouf Confirms Our Francis Ford Coppola Scoop
Our previous scoop in which we revealed Shia LaBeouf is starring in a long-delayed Francis Ford Coppola film has been confirmed.
Actor Shia LaBeouf has returned to the headlines in full force recently. The controversial and disputed interview in Variety, in which actor/filmmaker Olivia Wilde claimed to have fired him from the production of her upcoming film Don’t Worry Darling, combined with LaBeouf’s rebuttal that he had quit the film would make him top of the entertainment news alone. However, Shia LaBeouf also just confirmed our exclusive scoop that he would be starring in the long-awaited Francis Ford Coppola film Megalopolis. This all makes it a pretty big time period for Shia LaBeouf news and for the star himself, who has been in self-imposed seclusion from Hollywood for several years.
As per our previous scoop, Shia LaBeouf will be starring in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, a project of the legendary director that has been in development for decades. Shia LaBeouf confirmed the news on a recent episode of actor Jon Bernthal’s weekly podcast Real Ones, in which he discussed many sensitive subjects from his recent life. In addition to Shia LaBeouf, Megalopolis has been confirmed to star Adam Driver, Laurence Fishburne, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Jon Voight. More recently, Aubrey Plaza joined the cast of the film, which is set to begin principal photography in the fall of 2022.
Details of Megalopolis are still scarce, so we do not know exactly what role Shia LaBeouf could be playing in the movie. Francis Ford Coppola has reportedly been developing the film since the 1980s and has been derailed from this passion project many times over the years. Megalopolis apparently is centered on the quest of an architect (likely Adam Driver, given the billing so far) to rebuild a massive city that has been ravaged by disasters. In some versions of the story so far, the city has either been New York City (where Francis Ford Coppola grew up) or directly inspired by it. At one point, Coppola seemed finally able to begin production on the film and shot some footage in 2001, only for the September 11 attacks to shut it down.
Megalopolis will be Francis Ford Coppola’s first movie since Twixt, a horror film starring Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, and Elle Fanning, in 2011. The director has become legendary for the number of delays his films have experienced, with an entire documentary being made about the difficulties of his 1979 film Apocalypse Now. Shia LaBeouf most recently starred in Pieces of a Woman (directed by Kornél Mundruczó) and The Tax Collector (directed by David Ayer) in 2020. In 2019, he also starred in The Peanut Butter Falcon and the loosely autobiographical Honey Boy, both of which he received critical acclaim for. Shia LaBeouf will soon be starring in the Abel Ferrara movie, Padre Pio, in which he will play the controversial 20th-century monk, who reportedly suffered from stigmata. According to recent interviews, Shia LaBeouf converted to Catholicism during the production of the film. We will continue to update with information on Megalopolis as it is confirmed.
