“Megalopolis” by Francis Ford Coppola in Imax release: Cannes

Imax is going big, mega in fact, by unveiling the highly anticipated Francis Ford Coppola film on Thursday. Megalopolispremiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday evening, will benefit from a worldwide Imax release.

“The film is going to be released in Imax,” Imax CEO Richard Gelfond told reporters at an event Thursday in Cannes. Megalopolis. “One of the things we pride ourselves on is being filmmaker-friendly. We therefore committed to Francis to produce a worldwide Imax release.

Gelford said he met with Coppola at Cannes and that Imax would likely wait to see who would distribute the film in the United States and when before dating its Imax release. The film has already been sold to several international territories.

On Monday, the director released the first trailer for his epic, self-funded passion project, further showing the scale and ambition of the project, with a large cast, dynamic shots of a utopian society and protests.

The film is a Roman epic set in an imagined modern America, according to early descriptions. Adam Driver leads Megalopolisand the film’s cast includes Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Jason Schwartzman, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, DB Sweeney and Dustin Hoffman.

Coppola started writing Megalopolis in 1983, and the film reportedly cost $120 million, financed in part by the sale of a significant portion of the director’s wine empire. He held a screening of the project in late March for potential buyers, attended by Universal’s Donna Langley, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Sony’s Tom Rothman. However, distribution experts have highlighted difficulties with positioning the film.