Oscar Isaac to Play Francis Ford Coppola in New Movie About ‘The Godfather’

Movies about the making of classic movies are now all the rage in Hollywood, and the trend has now reached the feet of another monumental movie, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. Oscar Isaac has been cast as Coppola opposite Jake Gyllenhaal as the legendary film producer and Paramount chief Robert Evans. The project will be directed by Barry Levinson, who won an Oscar for directing Rain Man.

The project, which still does not have a title, is based on a Black List script by Andrew Farontte, reports The Hollywood Reporter. The project will chronicle how Evans and a 31-year-old Coppola worked together to create The Godfather with Marlon Brando and a little-known Al Pacino. Casting those two parts will be no easy task. The producers are Echo Lake Entertainment’s Mike Marcus, Doug Mankoff, and Andrew Spaulding and Kevin Turen, Jon Levin, and Baltimore Pictures’ Jason Sosnoff.

“Out of the madness of production, and against all odds, a classic film happened,” Levinson said in a brief statement. Coppola also gave the project his seal of approval, noting, “Any movie that Barry Levinson makes about anything, will be interesting and worthwhile!”

Isaac recently finished filming Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s new adaptation of the science fiction classic. The film was originally scheduled to hit theaters in December but has now been pushed until Oct. 1, 2021, due to the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the movie industry. Isaac’s next project is HBO’s limited series Scenes from a Marriage, which is inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s movie of the same name.

As for Gyllenhaal, he recently starred in theaters in Spider-Man: Far From Home as the villain Mysterio. He has several projects in the works, including The Guilty, a police drama directed by Antoine Fuqua and co-written by Nic Pizzolatto. He was a producer on Netflix’s The Devil All The Time and Tate Taylor’s upcoming Breaking News in Yuba County with Mila Kunis.

The Godfather project comes on the heels of other upcoming movies based on the making of classics. David Fincher’s first film in six years is Netflix’s Mank, a black and white drama about the making of Citizen Kane from the perspective of writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, played by Gary Oldman. The film was written by Fincher’s late father Jack.

In August, Deadline reported Ben Affleck signed on to direct The Big Goodbye, a film about the making of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown. Affleck plans to write the script and produce with Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels. Coincidentally, this film will also involve Evans, who was head of Paramount when both classic movies were made. In addition, Chinatown was up against The Godfather Part II for Best Picture at the 1975 Oscars.