The first official teaser trailer for “Megalopolis” was released this week, and Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded, decades-in-the-making passion project looks just as decadent and surreal as we were hoping. Described as “a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America,” the movie takes place in a city called New Rome, where Adam Driver plays Cesar Catilina, “a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future,” with Giancarlo Esposito playing the villainous mayor.
In the teaser we see sprawling cityscapes, a Roman chariot race, exceedingly glamorous costumes and lots of fantastical visual effects. Of course, at Jalopnik we’ve all been curious as to what sort of vehicles would star in the film, and while there’s only a couple of cars present in this teaser, the hero car seems perfectly cast: Driver’s character is being driven around in a vintage Citroën DS, with Laurence Fishburne behind the wheel.
The black DS is a later facelift model, probably one of the high-end Pallas trims, and it seems like this DS has the rare partition option that adds a fixed wall between the driver compartment and the rear passenger area, with a limo-style retractable window. Coppola allegedly smoked a ton of weed during the making of “Megalopolis,” which further explains the casting of the DS. I mean, most Citroëns seem like they could only have been dreamt up by someone who got so stoned they saw into an alternate dimension, which kinda seems like this movie’s entire vibe.
Other vehicles visible in the trailer include a Cadillac Escalade limo pulling up outside a fictionalized Madison Square Garden, a mid-2000’s Dodge Charger police car, and a Chevrolet Tahoe that seems to be some sort of government or law enforcement video. “Megalopolis” doesn’t seem like it’ll be a car movie per se — I’m not expecting any “Mission: Impossible” style car chases, though I’d love to be proven wrong — but it should provide some extreme visual stimulation for nerdy French car enthusiasts like me.
“Megalopolis” will premiere on May 16 at the Cannes Film Festival in France, and while theatrical distribution plans have yet to be announced, Coppola says it will be released later this year.
