LEGENDARY American film director Francis Ford Coppola has been urgently hospitalised in Italy, according to local reports.
The 86-year-old was reportedly taken for a planned operation in Rome on Tuesday morning, but then rushed into the ward with an irregular heartbeat.
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The Hollywood titan has been in Italy while screening his latest, decades-in-the-making film – Megalopolis – at the Magna Grecia Festival in Calabria.
He was scheduled in for a cardiac ablation, a minor op for irregular heartbeats, but doctors noticed atrial fibrillation which demanded urgent monitoring, reports La Repubblica.
The director is said to be staying in the Tor Vergata Polyclinic, but there has been no comment from his team.
Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, and Giancarlo Esposito star in the work, which has stirred considerable controversy.
Presenting the film on August 1, Coppola delivered a philosophical meditation on death and humanity – which some commenters read as confronting his legacy.
He financed the $120million movie himself and premiered it at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
The passion project has proven something of a flop, broadly disappointing critics and audiences, and is the subject of an upcoming documentary called Megadoc.
Directed by Mike Figgis, Megadoc will premier at the 2025 Venice Film Festival at the end of August.
Coppola has spent considerable time in Italy this year, partly to scout locations for another new film he planned to shoot in the autumn.
Coppola is considered one of the greatest living movie directors.
He has collected five Oscars in his career, and directed iconic films including Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
In mid-July, he was greeted by a crowd of young people in Soverato, as a special guest at the preview of the Magna Graecia Film Festival.
He said at the time: “Young people tell me the world is a mess, but I tell them there’s no problem that humanity can’t solve.
“We must build a great new future, and do it together for the sake of our children. And tonight, we’re taking a leap into the future.”
Coppola’s wife, Eleanor, died last spring.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, to a father who was a flautist in the local orchestra, he is a second generation Italian immigrant.
He spent most of his childhood in Queens, New York.
His first success was with the 1968 film Finian’s Rainbow, starring Petula Clark and Fred Astaire.
But his breakthrough was with The Godfather in 1974, starring Marlon Brando, Robert de Niro and Al Pacino.
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