Sofia Coppola (daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola), plays Michael Corleone's daughter, despite playing his nephew [sic] as an infant in The Godfather (1972). Winona Ryder was originally cast, but she withdrew due to exhaustion.
The initial draft for this film had Tom Hagen in it. However, Robert Duvall refused to play his role due to contract disagreements with Paramount. As a result, the character B.J. Harrison was rewritten as a Hagen-like character.
Robert Duvall wanted $5 million to reprise his role as Tom Hagen in this film. They turned him down and the part was recast and altered for George Hamilton to play the new lawyer character B.J. Harrison. A line of dialogue now says that Hagen died years before.
The film was made in part to address the financial problems that Zoetrope Studios had incurred as a result of the failure of Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988).
The first song played by the band at Michael Corleone's party following the church ceremony is "Cuban Rhapsody," the same melody sung by "Yolanda," the entertainer in the New Year's Eve nightclub scene in The Godfather: Part II (1974).
Twin girls with long dark hair are shown in a close-up pan in the crowd at Michael's party. In The Godfather (1972), similar girls were shown when Don Vito Corleone was brought back from the hospital.
The twins are Sonny's daughters.
Sofia Coppola's character's aunt is played by her actual aunt, Talia Shire.
The year of Michael's death is never mentioned, but an insider of Zoetrope Studios said that it was around 1997.
Al Pacino was offered $5 million but wanted $7 million plus profits from gross to reprise his role as Michael. Coppola refused, and threatened to rewrite the script by starting off with Michael's funeral sequence instead of the film's introduction. Pacino agreed to the $5-million offer.
Martin Scorsese's mother is one of the women that stops Vincent to complain about the poor care of the neighborhood. See also Goodfellas (1990).
The presence of oranges in all three "Godfather" movies indicates that a death or a close call will soon happen. Michael Corleone dies with oranges nearby. Although an orange rolls over the table just before the helicopter-hit.
Robert De Niro lobbied for the role of Vincent Mancini. Director Francis Ford Coppola considered it, which would have included aging Al Pacino's Michael Corleone even more, but eventually decided against the idea.
Actors competing for the role of Vincent Mancini, according to Francis Ford Coppola, included: Alec Baldwin, Matt Dillon, Vincent Spano, Val Kilmer, Charlie Sheen, Billy Zane and Nicolas Cage. Julia Roberts was Coppola's dream choice for Mary Corleone, but she had scheduling conflicts at both times when the role was open. Madonna campaigned for the role of Mary Corleone, and had a meeting with Coppola and Robert De Niro to discuss how to adapt the role to their ages.
Paramount tried to go ahead with the film for many years without either Francis Ford Coppola or Mario Puzo's involvement. No less than twelve scripts were written, including ones by Michael Eisner and Don Simpson. Most of the scripts had lots of international intrigue with the Corleone family, now led by Michael's son Anthony, battling the CIA, Castro's Cuban government, or South American drug cartels. Puzo handed in a script in 1978 that dealt with Anthony Corleone being recruited by the CIA to assassinate a Latin American dictator. He wrote another script in 1986 with producer Nicholas Gage that featured Sonny Corleone's bastard son Vincent Mancini while showing the early life of the young Sonny Corleone. When considering making this film without Coppola, Paramount considered directors Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, Costa-Gavras, Alan J. Pakula, Robert Benton, Michael Cimino and Michael Mann. At one point they were even close to signing Sylvester Stallone to direct and star in the film.
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