Few directors have a more legendary filmography than Francis Ford Coppola, the mind behind The Godfather trilogy, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. But Megalopolis, hitting cinemas this weekend, is the most ambitious project of his career. For Coppola, Megalopolis isn’t just another film. Self-financed at a cost of $120 million, it’s a culmination of his vision of “Zoetrope filmmaking.” It’s not just a movie; it’s his vision for a revolution in filmmaking. If you see it in cinemas, at one point, a staff member of the cinema will walk up to the screen and ask questions of Adam Driver’s character, who will respond in turn. But you’ll likely be seeing it with only a few others. It’s expected to be one of the biggest flops of the year.

“Zoetrope” is both Coppola’s production company and the title of the filmmaking style it was built around. And both were too early, ambitious, and disorganized to succeed. One From The Heart, the first flagship film of the Zoetrope style, blended classic studio filmmaking with live sound mixing and live editing. It flopped so hard it bankrupted the company. Megalopolis, the second attempt, may just bankrupt Coppola personally. Coppola believes that this new form, using video cameras to shoot and video-enhanced backdrops, could let artists make more bold, independent films than the studio system made possible. When Coppola started developing the concept, Megalopolis was supposed to be the ultimate demonstration of that.