After breaking out with the HBO seriesGirls,Adam Driveralmost immediately dipped his toes in the world of blockbuster films, starring as the antihero Kylo Ren in three Star Wars sequels. But he never quit his roots. The actor can currently be seen inMegalopolis, the epic science fiction drama film by directorFrancis Ford Coppola. The movie opened this past weekend to divisive reviews and tragic box office response, concludingan unconnected quartet of long-gestating passion projects that Driver has starred in for legendary filmmakers. All four films, unfortunately, didn’t work at the box office, despite a collective wait of decades between them.
Megalopolishasn’t even cracked the $5 million mark yetat the domestic box office. The movie was first conceived by Coppola back in the 1970s, when he was in the midst of delivering an all-time run that includedThe Godfather,The Godfather: Part II,Apocalypse Now, andThe Conversation. A sweeping parable about greed, consumerism, and corruption,Megalopoliswas deemed too esoteric to warrant the kind of budget that Coppola needed, and the filmmaker eventuallyended up self-financing the project. He did this, in part, by selling off a stake in his wine empire. The moviereportedly cost $120 million to produce.
But before appearing inMegalopolis, Driver had already starred in a trio of long-in-the-works passion projects for filmmakers such asMartin Scorsese,Terry Gilliam, andMichael Mann. He appeared alongsideAndrew Garfieldin Scorsese’sSilence— an adaptation ofShūsaku Endō’s novel of the same name. Scorsese had been developing the project since the early 1990s, and it eventually debuted in 2016. The movie earned excellent reviews, but under-performed commercially, grossingjust $7 million domesticallyagainst a reported production budget of around $50 million.
Driver is a Savior for Auteur Filmmakers
In 2018, Driver starred alongsideJonathan Prycein Gilliam’sThe Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a project that actually began filming several years ago withJohnny Deppin Driver’s role, before being canceled for a variety of reasons. Gilliam’s efforts to get the movie off the ground resulted in one of the greatest documentaries about filmmaking ever made:Lost in La Mancha.The Man Who Killed Don Quixotewent through several hurdles even after Driver had signed on, and hadearned the reputation of being a cursed projectby the time it eventually debuted. It grossed less than half-a-million domestically, and earned mixed reviews.
Just last year, Driver starred in Mann’sFerrari, an unconventionalbiopic ofEnzo Ferrari, which was produced on a budget of $90 million. Mann had been trying to get the film off the ground for over two decades.Ferrariopened to positive reviews, butearned just $18 million domestically. Which means that thecumulative domestic box office of these four films is currently around $30 million. It’s the only blot on what is otherwise an extremely rare achievement that any actor should be proud of. You can watchMegalopolisin theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
Megalopolis
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