This would be effective, and it makes the ending break your heart. “Usually, I go back and make them longer. “There’s a cut I want to make that would be 14 minutes shorter,” Coppola told Deadline in an interview last year. Over the years, Coppola has discussed the third film and how he would go back and change it given the chance. “Neither of us had the power to insist on our title but in my mind, the film will always be called The Death of Michael Corleone.” “It was not meant to be part of a trilogy, but rather a coda to the first two films, and we wished it could be given a different title, one more appropriate,” Coppola wrote in a new introduction to The Godfather novel released last year. Her performance in the film was widely panned and mocked for years to come.Īs Coppola mentioned in the press release, the title was a sore point as well. So instead, he cast his daughter, Sofia Coppola. Actresses such as Annabella Sciorra and Laura San Giacomo were considered, it was reported at the time, but Coppola felt they were too old for the role. Meanwhile, Winona Ryder-who had been cast as Michael Corleone’s teenage daughter over actors like Julia Roberts and Madonna-famously dropped out of the project before shooting even one scene, citing exhaustion. “But not three or four times, which is what they did.”) Duvall, a seven-time Oscar nominee who was previously nominated for the first Godfather film, was essentially replaced in the cast by George Hamilton. (“I said I would work easily if they paid Pacino twice what they paid me, that’s fine,” Duvall told 60 Minutes in 2004. Robert Duvall was famously low-balled by the studio on salary and refused to return to return as Corleone family consigliere, Tom Hagen. Once he and author Mario Puzo returned, however, things didn’t get much easier. “I wish they would just leave it alone and let it be finished and not have to get me jealous or possessive of it.” “It’s like when you have an ex-girlfriend, you hear about her and you say, I don’t care. In an interview from the Berlin Film Festival in 1990, Coppola recalled being approached by Paramount after hearing they had wanted to do a third film with a new director and either Sylvester Stallone or John Travolta as stars. Production on The Godfather Part III was fraught from the start, notably because Coppola wasn’t initially keen to revisit the franchise. It is said that Coppola was rewriting it as he went along, and indeed it lacks the confident forward sweep of a film that knows where it’s going.”Įbert wasn’t wrong. “If you stand back and look at it rationally, this is a confusing and disjointed film.
“Because we know it so intimately, because its rhythms and values are instantly recognizable to us, a film like The Godfather Part III probably works better than it should,” Roger Ebert wrote in a mostly positive three-and-a-half star review. With these changes and the restored footage and sound, to me, it is a more appropriate conclusion to The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II and I’m thankful to Jim Gianopulos and Paramount for allowing me to revisit it.”
“For this version of the finale, I created a new beginning and ending, and rearranged some scenes, shots, and music cues. “ Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone is an acknowledgment of Mario’s and my preferred title and our original intentions for what became The Godfather: Part III,” Coppola said in a statement.
The project, saddled with the lengthy title Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, will debut in theaters (where open and available) in December before hitting digital platforms as well as physical media. As announced by Paramount on Thursday, Coppola has finally completed a long-discussed new edit of The Godfather Part III, just in time for the film’s 30th anniversary. On the heels of his acclaimed restorations of Apocalypse Now and The Cotton Club, the Oscar-winning filmmaker has next set his sights on the notorious and disappointing finale to The Godfather trilogy. When it comes to his films, director Francis Ford Coppola is perhaps always ready to be pulled back in.