Moviepolis began as director Heather Ferreira's bold challenge to invent and create a modern television series as nostalgic as a message in a bottle: one that looked and sounded as if it was produced on film by Universal Television in 1973 and then discovered in 2015 in a buried time capsule.  

 

The concept was simple: a speculative, imaginative look at the young Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese policing Hollywood during their adventure years - the difficult, even dangerous era before Apocalypse Now, before Taxi Driver - even before The Godfather.  Ferreira set to work scripting more than an entire season of 1- and 2-hour episodes around the concept, then began the rigorous process of casting: a search for the perfect young actors who would bring the 20-something Scorsese and Coppola to life, on screen.

 

Both were found after years of search in Jack Lamb and Bear Manescalchi.  Together the pair allied with New York University alumna Ferreira to create a series like none other: and today Lamb, as congenial, visionary young Coppola and fellow Manescalchi as intense, at times fragile young fellow Sicilian Scorsese, immortalize the movie industry's two most legendary directors, telling us The Stories BEFORE The Glory.

 

Barely into its first season, Movieopolis has already garnered acclaim: the directors themselves know about the series, and their colleagues who struggled beside them during the Seventies are among its cheerleaders.  

 

Cinematographer Michael Chapman, ASC, who filmed Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull for the real Martin Scorsese is a devoted fan of the show, and Coppola, Kubrick and Scorsese expert and author Vincent Lo Brutto joined as episodic adviser.  The show's fanbase numbers are growing.  It has attracted recent attention from the executive producer of Game of Thrones, and five networks are keenly interested.

 

Movieopolis is in production in and throughout Los Angeles and Los Angeles and surrounding counties.  It is planned as a limited series for cable (satellite) broadcast, with 26 to 48 concurrent episodes varying between 60 and 120 minutes each.

 

Fans of cinema will get a treat every week: George Lucas, portrayed in his youthful twenties, Robert De Niro, Steven Spielberg and even Stanley Kubrick appear as substantial characters by end of season one.

 

For historians and fans of Classic Hollywood, it can't be better: Movieopolis is a cinema and independent film enthusiast's dream come true - instead of a book about Easy Riders and Raging Bulls who rumbled and roared through the Los Angeles movie industry of the Seventies, Movieopolis grabs viewers by the collar and hauls them straight into the screen!  

 

And more intriguingly, the show resembles a long-lost episode of Columbo - not only in craft, feel, and score, but also by storyline: because the premise of Movieopolis is a twist, and quite simple: Like any industry, Hollywood has crime, some of it gruesome.  During the Seventies, police didn't get to see or solve most of it.

 

Young Scorsese and Coppola will.