‘The Godfather’ Director Francis Ford Coppola Hospitalized

Iconic director Francis Ford Coppola was hospitalized this morning in Italy.

The news comes right after he attended the Magna Grecia film festival in Italy, where he presented a director’s cut of his controversial 2024 film Megalopolis starring Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito, Shia LaBeouf, and Jon Voight.

According to the Mirror, the director had already scheduled a heart procedure in Italy to take place after the festival, but experienced a “mild cardiac arrythmia” and was placed under the care of doctors at a hospital in Calabria before the procedure was set to occur.

Coppola is one of the most famous directors of all time, known for creating, writing, and directing several all-timers like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, The Outsiders, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

The acclaimed director just finished a six-city U.S. tour of the Megalopolis director’s cut, with the final stop taking place in California where the director gave a live Q&A inside San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts.

Per THR, the director is now “resting nicely” after undergoing his procedure. There’s very little information about why Coppola returned to Calabria after visiting last month, but all sources seem to indicate the 86-year-old director is gearing up to film a new movie. Despite Calabria’s long and storied history with mob violence, don’t expect the film to be anything like his Godfather trilogy.

“I’m here in Calabria to see some locations for a new project that’s very important to me…A new film that will focus on the beautiful things of Calabria,” he told local reporters. “Calabria is a region very famous for its mafia, but that doesn’t interest me. My film instead will focus solely on the beautiful things about this region.”