Just over two weeks before Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project Megalopolis is set to be released, the director has sued Variety for libel over a July 26 article that called his behavior on the set of the sci-fi film “unprofessional,” alleging that the Oscar winner hugged and kissed female background actors participating in a party scene.
The 85-year-old filmmaker is seeking $15 million and further punitive and exemplary damages from defendants Variety Media LLC and journalists Brent Lang and Tatiana Siegel in the jury trial seeking complaint filed Tuesday in LA Superior Court.
It came two days after Megalopolis extra Lauren Pagone, who was quoted in an Aug. 2 followup Variety article about Coppola’s actions toward female background performers, sued the filmmaker and others in Georgia for civil battery, civil assault, and negligent failure to prevent sexual harassment.
Even with the timing, the eight-page filing from Coppola does not mention that Peach State suit, Pagone or the Variety story she was interviewed for. What it does talk about is the damage to Coppola by alleged “false and defamatory statements” in the July 26 Variety article, the video included in the story, and the “malice” the publication allegedly showed towards him.
Read Francis Ford Coppola’s libel suit against Variety here
As the filing from Coppola’s Sauer & Wagner attorneys says in its opening:
“Some people are creative. Very few people are creative geniuses. In the world of motion pictures, Plaintiff Francis Ford Coppola (“Coppola”) is a creative genius. Some people are jealous and resentful of genius. Those people therefore denigrate and tell knowing and reckless falsehoods about those of whom they are jealous. Here, Variety Media, LLC (“Variety”), its writers and editors, hiding behind supposedly anonymous sources, accused Coppola of manifest incompetence as a motion picture director, of unprofessional behavior on the set of his most recent production, Megalopolis, of setting up some type of scheme so that anyone on the set who had a complaint of harassment or otherwise had nowhere to lodge a complaint, and of hugging topless actresses on the set. Each of these accusations was false and knowingly so. They were made to harm Coppola’s reputation and cause him severe emotional distress. That harm has been caused.”
Later the complaint adds:
“Defendants claim to have had anonymous sources for the defamatory statements in the Article. All the sources were allegedly on the set with apparently one being a crew member who took the videos attached to the Article. Defendants knew that all cast and crew members on Megalopolis signed an NDA in which they promised to keep confidential any information about Megalopolis and its production (among other things). The signatories to the NDA agreed to hold all such information in the strictest confidence and assure that the confidential information not be published. Defendants knew, therefore, that their sources were unreliable and did not tell the truth when they signed the NDA. Nonetheless, Defendants relied on these supposed sources and, by doing so, acted with reckless disregard for whether the sources, this time, were telling the truth or not.”
On July 30, four days after Variety’s original article, Deadline published a piece with another extra from the movie who said the claims that Coppola misbehaved during production were untrue. “He did nothing to make me or for that matter anyone on set feel uncomfortable,” Rayna Menz told Deadline. Making similar remarks on social media, Menz was featured in the video that accompanied the initial Variety article.
In an interview for a Variety story published on August 2, Pagone detailed what she claimed occurred during certain nightclub scenes on the Atlanta production of Megalopolis. She said she “was in shock” by the director’s alleged kissing and hugging of her on set. Pagone’s comments seem to back up details of the July 26 Variety story, as well as a similar article by UK broadsheet The Guardian back in May, just before the self-funded Megalopolis premiered at Cannes, which also is not mentioned in Coppola’s actual filing.
Pagone’s remarks to Variety make up the gist of her civil suit in Fulton County Superior Court.
Filed on September 10 and seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial of her own, Pagone’s suit claims she was sexually assaulted by Coppola. Pagone states that she was “shocked and confused” by the director hugging and kissing her and touching “plaintiff’s butt without her consent” during the shooting of a bawdy nightclub scene for the film on February 14, 2023.
Naming Rose Locke Casting and CL Casting as defendants too, Pagone’s legal action says: “Plaintiff was not provided with any rider that explained the details for sexual content and/or nudity guidelines on set nor was there any description as to what she or other actors would soon experience on set.” To that, Pagone also bemoans the lack of Intimacy Coordinators on the Megalopolis set. (Two Intimacy Coordinators worked on Megalopolis but neither of them was at the scenes in question, one of them told Variety in the July 26 story.)
Coppola’s lawyers did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment. If and when they do, this post will be updated. The story also will be updated with a statement from Variety when available. Deadline and Variety share a parent company in Penske Media Corporation.
Distributed by Lionsgate, Megalopolis is set to be released on September 27.
Nellie Andreeva contributed to this post
