LEGENDARY American film director Francis Ford Coppola has been rushed to hospital in Italy, according to local reports.
The 86-year-old was reportedly taken for a planned operation in Rome on Tuesday morning, but then rushed into the ward with an irregular heartbeat.
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The Hollywood titan has been in Italy while screening his latest, decades-in-the-making film – Megalopolis – at the Magna Grecia Festival in Calabria.
He was scheduled in for a cardiac ablation, a minor op for irregular heartbeats, but doctors noticed atrial fibrillation which demanded urgent monitoring, reports La Repubblica.
The director is said to be staying in the Tor Vergata Polyclinic, but there has been no comment from his team.
Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, and Giancarlo Esposito star in the work, which has stirred considerable controversy.
He financed the $120million movie himself and premiered it at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
The passion project has proven something of a flop, broadly disappointing critics and audiences, and is the subject of an upcoming documentary called Megadoc.
Coppola has spent considerable time in Italy this year, partly to scout locations for another new film he planned to shoot in the autumn.
The Godfather – Trailer for classic Mafia movie featuring Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by Robert Evans
The director is considered one of the greatest filmmakers ever and has collected five Oscars in his career.
Among his numerous successes in the film business, Coppola directed iconic films including The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather and its acclaimed sequel The Godfather Part II.
Coppola’s wife, Eleanor, died last spring.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, to a father who was a flautist in the local orchestra, he is a second generation Italian immigrant.
He spent most of his childhood in Queens, New York.
His first success was with the 1968 film Finian’s Rainbow, starring Petula Clark and Fred Astaire.
But his breakthrough was with The Godfather in 1972, starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall.
The film won three Oscars – including Best Picture – and was a box-office phenomenon, grossing $291million worldwide making it the highest grossing movie ever made at that point.
Further cementing his legacy, Coppola followed that triumph up with a 1974 sequel The Godfather Part II which, despite only grossing $98m was lauded by movie critics.
With some experts even calling the four-hour opus superior to the original, it won an astonishing six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director.
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