Francis Ford Coppola: Today's Hollywood wouldn't make 'The Godfather'

May 1 (UPI) -- The Godfather may be considered a film classic, but its director Francis Ford Coppola says he doubts he would have been able to get a studio to back it if it was made in 2017.

The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II were screened Saturday as part of New York's Tribeca Film Festival. In celebration of the first movie's 45th anniversary, Coppola and actors Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, James Caan and Diane Keaton reunited to discuss their Godfather memories in front of a crowd of about 6,000 people at Radio City Music Hall.

"This film could be made today, but it wouldn't get a go-ahead. ... The first Godfather cost $6.5 million, the second Godfather cost about $11 or $12 million, which if you convert that for the money [it would cost today,] it would take a major studio. But it would never get through the process of getting an OK or what they now call a 'green light,'" Coppola explained. "Nothing can get a green light unless it's a movie that they can have a whole series of them and pretty much a Marvel Comics type of thing."

Coppola then recalled a studio executive once asked him how to make a film that is "successful financially and also artistically."

"And I said to him, 'Risk,'" Coppola laughed. "Nobody wants the risk when you get into business."