THE GODFATHER
The Godfather is a seminal American crime-drama franchise centering on the fictional Corleone mafia family. Created by author Mario Puzo with his 1969 novel and brought to the screen by director Francis Ford Coppola, the property encompasses acclaimed feature films, official continuation novels, and video games.
Cronologia
Overview
Created by author Mario Puzo with his 1969 bestseller, The Godfather franchise expanded into one of the most celebrated properties in modern entertainment history.
Under the direction of Francis Ford Coppola, the central story was adapted into a cinematic trilogy comprising The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), and The Godfather Part III (1990), alongside Coppola's 2020 re-cut, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.
Beyond the core cinematic trilogy, the franchise's total scope includes six canonical or officially authorized novels—spanning Puzo's original works, companion novels, and continuation books by Mark Winegardner and Ed Falco, with an upcoming novel titled Connie by Adriana Trigiani scheduled for fall 2027—as well as four distinct video game releases across MS-DOS, console, and browser platforms.
Origins
The franchise originated with Mario Puzo's 1969 crime novel The Godfather, published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, which spent 67 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. Paramount Pictures optioned the property, initially planning a modern, low-budget $2 million adaptation.
Studio head Robert Evans specifically sought an Italian-American director to 'smell the spaghetti' after previous mob films by non-Italians failed at the box office. Paramount offered the job to Sergio Leone and Peter Bogdanovich, but both declined.
Francis Ford Coppola accepted the assignment on the advice of George Lucas, largely to pay off a $400,000 debt incurred from budget overruns on Lucas's THX 1138. Coppola reframed the story as a metaphor for American capitalism and successfully fought Paramount to retain the book's period setting of 1945 to 1955, as well as casting Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone and Al Pacino as Michael Corleone.
I PEZZI DI THE GODFATHER
The cat held by Marlon Brando in the opening wedding scene was a stray found around the studio lot that Francis Ford Coppola dropped into Brando's lap right before shooting.
