The Godfather Part III is a 1990 American epic crime film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola from the screenplay co-written with Mario Puzo.

The film stars Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Andy García, Eli Wallach, Joe Mantegna, Bridget Fonda, George Hamilton and Sofia Coppola.

The film also includes fictionalized accounts of two real-life events: the 1978 death of Pope John Paul I and the Papal banking scandal of 1981–1982, both linked to Michael Corleone's business affairs.

In his audio commentary for Part II, Coppola stated that only a dire financial situation, caused by the failure of his 1982 musical fantasy One from the Heart, compelled him to take up Paramount's long-standing offer to make a third installment.

[4] Winona Ryder was initially cast in the role of Michael Corleone's daughter Mary, but eventually left production due to other commitments and nervous exhaustion.

The Godfather Part III premiered in Beverly Hills on December 20, 1990, and was widely released in the United States on Christmas Day.

It grossed $136.8 million worldwide, and garnered seven nominations at the 63rd Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor (Garcia).

Wracked with guilt over his ruthless rise to power, especially for having ordered his brother Fredo Corleone's murder, he donates millions to charitable causes.

At a reception in Michael's honor at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral that follows a papal order induction ceremony, Anthony tells his father that he is leaving law school to become an opera singer.

The head of the Vatican Bank, Archbishop Gilday, has accumulated a massive deficit of $765M, and Michael offers $600M in exchange for shares in Internazionale Immobiliare,[6] an international real estate company, which would make him its largest single shareholder.

Don Altobello, a New York Mafia boss and Connie's godfather, tells Michael that his partners on The Commission want to be involved with the Immobiliare deal.

Michael discovers that the Immobiliare deal is an elaborate swindle, arranged by Lucchesi, Gilday and Vatican accountant Frederick Keinszig.

After the show, on the opera house steps as they leave, Mosca shoots at Michael, wounding him; a second bullet hits Mary, killing her.

Production on this story did not move forward, and in 1982, Vincent Patrick wrote a new screenplay in which Michael Corleone and Tom Hagen would have been killed in the opening scene, and would have focused on the first film's protagonists' child.

Marino and Wright later sought Writers' Guild of America arbitration to receive a story credit on the final film, but were declined.

That year, Coppola began considering returning to the franchise because of a dire financial situation, initially caused by the failures of One from the Heart (1982) and The Cotton Club (1984).

In 1988, after Puzo and Nicholas Gage wrote another draft, Talia Shire convinced Coppola to sign a deal to direct and write The Godfather Part III for $6 million and a share of the film's profits.

According to Coppola, had Duvall agreed to take part in the film, the Hagen character would have been heavily involved in running the Corleone charities.

[16][17] Winona Ryder was cast in the role and started filming her part, but dropped out after a few weeks into production due to commitments with Mermaids (1990) and nervous exhaustion.

[7] As an infant, Sofia Coppola had played Michael Corleone's infant nephew in The Godfather, during the climactic baptism/murder montage at the end of that film (Sofia Coppola also appears in The Godfather Part II as a small immigrant child, in which nine-year-old Vito Corleone arrives by steamer at Ellis Island).

This period also included location shoots throughout Rome and Caprarola at landmarks such as the Palace of Justice, the Vatican Bank, Castello di Lunghezza and Santa Maria della Quercia.

[2] Common criticisms of The Godfather Part III focused on Sofia Coppola's acting, the convoluted plot, and the film's inadequacy as a "stand-alone" story.

The site's critical consensus reads: "The final installment of The Godfather saga recalls its predecessors' power when it's strictly business, but underwhelming performances and confused tonality brings less closure to the Corleone story.

The website's critics consensus reads: "The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone pulls the audience back into Francis Ford Coppola's epic gangster saga with a freshly — albeit slightly — edited version of its final installment.

I hope that a lot of people revisit it (or discover it for the first time), using that word 'coda' as a key — for, of course, The Godfather Part III always was an extended coda to what is arguably the greatest epic saga in the history of American cinema.

"[39] Writing for IndieWire, David Ehrlich said, "But when it was announced that [Coppola] had inevitably assembled a new cut of his most famous cause célèbre and re-christened it with the title he'd always wanted for the film... he wasn't trying to make it 'better' so much as he was trying to shift its place in history and reframe the picture as less the third part of a flawed trilogy than the postscript of a legendary dyad.

Journalist David Yallop argues that Luciani was planning a reform of Vatican finances and that he died by poisoning; these claims are reflected in the film.

The character has also drawn comparisons to Cardinal Giuseppe Caprio, as he was in charge of the Vatican finances during the approximate period in which the movie was based.

[46] The character of Frederick Keinszig, the Swiss banker who is murdered and left hanging under a bridge, mirrors the fate (and physical appearance) of Roberto Calvi, the Italian head of the Banco Ambrosiano who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 (though it was initially unclear whether it was suicide or murder, in 2002 courts in London ruled the latter).

[48] Don Lucchesi is widely seen as partly inspired by seven-time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti, who wore similar thick-rimmed glasses.