After an eight-year break, Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola plans to make an artistic comeback with a low-budget adaptation of Youth Without Youth. The novel by Mircea Eliade tells of a Romanian man who regains his youth after being struck by lightning. Nazi scientists want to capture him for scientific experimentation. Fearing for his innards, Junior wisely flees to India via Switzerland. The movie stars Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs) and Bruno Ganz.

Coppola had been working for two decades on a script about a dystopic, future NYC called Megalopolis. But YWY reportedly carried a lot of the same themes:

“I was excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better: time, consciousness and the dreamlike basis of reality… For me, it is indeed a return to the ambitions I had for work in cinema as a student…” [Link]

“In a way it’s like a Hitchcock picture and Tim Roth is the Jimmy Stewart — the guy who gets caught up in something fascinating and big… Maybe I’ll be more qualified to do Megalopolis if I really digest this film.” [Link]

Omkara (Othello) director Vishal Bhardwaj got the job of supporting the India shoot through someone he met at Mira Nair’s film workshop in Kampala:

Omkara (Othello) director Vishal Bhardwaj

… Coppola mentioned… that he needed to shoot in India for two days but couldn’t be present himself and had no contacts there… It wasn’t really any tedious work. It’s Coppola’s DOP (director of photography) who had to do the shooting. We had to provide production support. [Link]

Even good directors fawn over their idols like teenage girls:

When he discussed money, I told him not to worry about it…. Coppola inspires all of Bollywood. But yes, only I have access to him. [Link]