It looks like actor Oscar Isaac was made an offer he couldn’t refuse. The Guatemalan American star has been cast in a film about the making of the acclaimed 1972 crime drama The Godfather. Isaac has been tapped to play Academy Award-winning filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.
Considered by many to be one of the best films of all time (the American Film Institute ranks it at No. 3 after Citizen Kane and Casablanca), The Godfather won three Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Screenplay (Coppola and Mario Puzo). Coppola was also nominated for Best Director that year. He lost to Bob Fosse for Cabaret but won the award two years later for The Godfather Part II.
The new film, which will be directed by Oscar-winner Barry Levinson (Rain Man), is called Francis and The Godfather. It tells the story about how Coppola convinced a struggling Paramount Pictures and former studio head Robert Evans to take a gamble on making the film. Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) is set to star as Evans.
“Any movie that Barry Levinson makes about anything will be interesting and worthwhile,” Coppola told Deadline.
Best known by mainstream audiences as Poe Dameron in the Star Wars sequel trilogy from 2015-2019, Isaac has also starred in critical hits like Inside Llewyn Davis and Ex Machina. This year, he can be seen in Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune. In 2014, Isaac starred as a 1980s businessman in the crime drama A Most Violent Year, which many cinephiles described as a sort of Michael Corleone character.
Now, all we have left to do is await the casting choices for original The Godfather roles played by Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan, and others. May we suggest Oscar winner Benicio del Toro (Traffic) or Oscar nominee Demián Bichir (A Better Life) to play el padrino?
