Director Francis Ford Coppola continues to round out the cast of his passion project Megalopolis, with controversial actor Shia LaBeouf leading a new round of additions to the film alongside Coppola’s sister Talia Shire (The Godfather) and nephew Jason Schwartzman (The French Dispatch).
LaBeouf’s casting marks the actor’s first major role since he was accused of abuse in December 2020 by ex-girlfriend FKA Twigs, the latest in a string of controversies and legal issues that have plagued the former Even Stevens and Transformers star in recent years.
Along with LaBeouf, Shire and Schwartzman, Coppola has also cast Grace Vanderwaal (Star Girl), Kathryn Hunter (The Tragedy of Macbeth), and James Remar (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), who join the previously announced Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne and Aubrey Plaza.
Based on a script that Coppola wrote back in the 1980s, the logline for Megalopolis reads: “The fate of Rome haunts a modern world unable to solve its own social problems in this epic story of political ambition, genius, and conflicted love.”