Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Glimpses of the Moon’ Struggling to Secure Financing

So, Francis Ford Coppola. Two years ago, he premiered “Megalopolis,” and ever since then has been trying to make another passion project, “Glimpses of the Moon.”

Given the amount of money he personally lost on the self-financed “Megalopolis,” reported at well over $100M, it was hard to believe Coppola would ever mount enough dough to make ‘Glimpses,’ yet somehow casting calls started last October for the project with a specific detail: production would begin in early November 2025 in Calabria, Italy. That, sadly, never happened.

Coppola did note that ‘Glimpses’ was “funded the conventional way, with the help of national subsidies, because I’m all borrowed out.” While it “won’t be cheap by any means,” he emphasized that, unlike “Megalopolis,” it will not be an “epic.” Last year, when discussing the financial strain of “Megalopolis,” Coppola told Deadline, “I used up my last hundred million dollars.”

Since then, the updates have been odd. Coppola shifted his focus, confirming he was editing a “more weird” version of “Megalopolis,” which he planned to release in 2026. A NYT report had Coppola selling his $1.8M private island lease and auctioning off his $1M gold watch he had owned for decades.

An Italian source now tells me that the reason for the delays on ‘Glimpses’ is that Coppola is still looking for the money to make it, and that’s in addition to receiving government support from Italian public funding such as subsidies and national tax incentives. The plan was originally to shoot in the UK, but Italy offering millions to Coppola to shoot in the Calabria/Basilicata region was a no-brainer. He’d be saving a few million by doing that.

Coppola has described ‘Glimpses’ as a “strange 30s-style musical.” No cast has been announced so far. This will be a loose adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel of the same name, while also being “inspired” by Leo McCarey’s “The Awful Truth.” Both works explore the story of a married couple who part amicably, only to discover it’s harder to let go than they imagined.

‘Glimpses’ is basically one of those “in development” or “not yet made” projects, and the question of “what is going on” has to do with it being stuck in the messy early stages of financing and pre-production. Whether it gets out of this limbo is a whole other story.