Francis Ford Coppola’s Roadside Attraction

Whereas making his long- gestating impartial epic Megalopolis in suburban Atlanta, Francis Ford Coppola was quietly at work on one other uncommon inventive undertaking.

In his downtime, the director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now determined to purchase and renovate an previous Days Inn in Peachtree Metropolis, Georgia, with an eye fixed towards constructing a singular hybrid area. The thought was to create a welcoming place to remain for people who find themselves making films within the space — or simply for the individuals who love them (films, that’s).

The result’s the All-Film Lodge, a 27-room boutique lodge that opened in the summertime, with a full postproduction facility accomplished early this 12 months. Coppola lived and labored right here for 2 years earlier than the 2024 launch of Megalopolis, and indicators that the area was constructed exactly to his tastes and desires are in every single place, from the breakfast pastries served on plates as soon as used as a part of Megalopolis‘ manufacturing design to the knob within the ADR room with a sticker that claims “FFC” to point that it’s calibrated for his most well-liked headphone quantity.

As intentional as he’s been as a filmmaker, Coppola is one thing of an unintentional hotelier. In 1993, he took a looking lodge his household had purchased in Belize a decade earlier as a household hideaway and reinvented it as a luxurious resort open to the general public, the Blancaneaux Lodge. Beneath the model “The Household Coppola Hideaways,” the Coppolas now have seven motels, together with properties in Guatemala, Argentina and Italy, all in places which have some private that means to them.

In a leafy neighborhood about 30 miles from Atlanta, the All-Film Lodge is the Coppolas’ first hospitality undertaking within the U.S. and the primary designed with work in thoughts. The placement is 9 miles from the busy Trilith Studios, previously generally known as Pinewood Atlanta Studios, the place Coppola shot Megalopolis and the place a number of Marvel and DC movies, together with this summer season’s Thunderbolts* and Superman films, have been made. Leisure is a significant financial engine in Georgia, which hosted 273 movie and TV productions in 2024 because of a beneficiant tax incentive program of as much as 30 p.c.

The All-Film Lodge, which negotiates particular charges for productions, want to be the house away from dwelling for a number of the non-local solid and crew engaged on these initiatives. For civilian company, costs start at $180 an evening for a single queen room and go as much as $420 for the Francis Ford Coppola Suite, which comes with the marks of an auteur — a large cinema display screen and projector, velvet upholstered administrators chairs — but in addition a few of Coppola’s quirky favorites, like a retro-styled three-in-one toaster, espresso maker and griddle that he likes to make use of to make his breakfast when he’s touring, and a few luxe Japanese-style linen robes that have been chosen by his spouse, Eleanor, a textile collector who died in 2024. There’s a Japanese suite, which has an unique artwork piece by Coppola’s pal, director Akira Kurosawa, and correspondence between Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, casually hanging amid shoji privateness screens and black-and-white photographs of Japanese movie icons.

Coppola all the time introduced Eleanor and their three youngsters with him on his film units, and the lodge is constructed with the intention that households will come right here too, with bunk-bed rooms, a youngsters’s playroom and hopscotch boards painted on the flooring exterior the rooms.

Together with the dwelling areas, the lodge has its areas for movie-making, equivalent to a stage with a bluescreen and soundproof enhancing suites. Each room, whether or not a postproduction area or a sleeping room, is related by way of Ethernet, so members of a manufacturing can work of their rooms or within the designated workspaces. Vestiges of the previous Days Inn have been repurposed in intelligent methods — a number of the artwork that hung within the previous visitor rooms, as an illustration, was was soundproofing panels within the enhancing suites.

All through the lodge there are items to attraction to cinephiles generally and Coppola stans particularly, just like the statue of a golden hawk from Megalopolis within the parking zone and the Godfather pinball machines and Apocalypse Now carpet within the foyer. A 30-seat screening room within the lodge is called after Dorothy Arzner, the primary feminine member of the Administrators Guild of America and considered one of Coppola’s movie professors at UCLA. A poster hanging exterior the screening room on a go to in January touted showings of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Spike Lee’s Malcolm X and Coppola’s personal Rumblefish.

There’s additionally a inexperienced room for gatherings and group meals, with extra of Coppola’s touches, together with the Illy espresso machine he favors, a glowing water station and a six-burner Wolf vary the place he favored to cook dinner pasta for members of his solid and crew, à la Clemenza in The Godfather. For filmmakers who want to be much less hands-on within the kitchen, the lodge also can present a non-public chef.

This story appeared within the Could 7 challenge of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click here to subscribe.