Francis Ford Coppola Is "Broke" After His $120 Million "Megalopolis" Gamble Flopped — And Now He's Selling His Watches To Raise Cash

Francis Ford Coppola is many things. He's a writer, producer, and director. He's won five Academy Awards and helped define the modern era of filmmaking. He's made some of the most significant movies in cinematic history, including "The Godfather," "The Godfather Part II," "Apocalypse Now," "The Conversation," "The Outsiders," and "Bram Stoker's Dracula."

He founded the independent studio American Zoetrope, which produced groundbreaking films for a generation of visionary directors. Beyond film, he has built a wide-ranging business empire that has included vineyards, luxury resorts, restaurants, olive oil, pasta, cigars, and even a literary magazine.

He's also… a gambler.

Not in the seedy Vegas sense of the word. Francis Ford Coppola gambles with his art. He bets everything—his fortune, his reputation, his comfort—for the chance to make something great. Throughout his career, he has repeatedly gone all-in on passion projects that few others would dare to finance. Sometimes those risks have paid off spectacularly, producing films that changed cinema forever. Other times, they've left him staring down bankruptcy.

And once again, Francis Ford Coppola is feeling the weight of a gamble that did not go his way, rendering him "broke" and forced to sell off a valuable watch collection just to keep food on the table…

Francis Ford Coppola / Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Before "The Godfather"

Before Francis Ford Coppola became one of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time, he was a struggling young director trying to recover from a series of disappointments. In the late 1960s, Coppola had all the credentials of a rising auteur. He had earned his master's degree at UCLA's film school, worked under Roger Corman, and directed a handful of small films that showed promise. But his early studio projects hadn't gone as planned. His 1968 musical "Finian's Rainbow," starring Fred Astaire, flopped at the box office, and his follow-up, "The Rain People," though artistically ambitious, earned strong reviews but little money.

At that point, Coppola's career was hanging by a thread. He had just founded American Zoetrope with George Lucas, envisioning it as a haven for independent filmmakers who wanted to escape the grip of Hollywood studios. But Zoetrope's first project, Lucas's "THX-1138," bombed commercially and left the fledgling company deep in debt. Coppola was broke, in debt to Warner Bros., and desperate to find work. That's when Paramount Pictures came calling with an offer to direct an adaptation of Mario Puzo's crime novel, "The Godfather."

At first, Coppola hated the book, calling it "sleazy" and beneath his artistic ambitions. But with bills piling up and his company on the brink, he reluctantly agreed to take the job—hoping it would buy him enough time to keep his struggling studio alive.

As we all know, "The Godfather" became one of the most successful and acclaimed films ever made, earning Coppola three Oscars and transforming him from a struggling director into one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood.

Gambling Man

The success of "The Godfather" and its sequel gave Francis the freedom to chase his artistic ambitions without restraint. In the mid-1970s, he relocated his operations to San Francisco and launched Zoetrope Studios, a bold attempt to create a filmmaker-run studio where directors could make movies free from Hollywood's control. It was an idealistic vision—part artist colony, part movie factory—and it became the centerpiece of Coppola's next great gamble.

Under the Zoetrope banner, Coppola self-financed a series of ambitious projects, including "The Conversation" and "Apocalypse Now." Both earned massive critical acclaim, but "Apocalypse Now" was a financial nightmare. The production was plagued by delays, typhoons, on-set chaos, and ballooning costs. Coppola mortgaged his home, borrowed against his future earnings, and poured his personal fortune into keeping the film alive. When it finally premiered in 1979, it was hailed as a masterpiece and went on to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes—but it left Coppola emotionally and financially exhausted.

His next gamble proved far more damaging. In 1982, Coppola wrote, directed, and financed "One from the Heart," a neon-lit Las Vegas musical that cost $25 million to make and earned barely $1 million at the box office. The failure crippled Zoetrope Studios and triggered a decade-long spiral of debt and litigation. Between 1983 and 1992, Coppola filed for bankruptcy three times—personally and through his companies. In his 1992 filing, he listed $98 million in liabilities against $53 million in assets.

To stay solvent, Coppola spent much of the 1980s and early 1990s as a "director for hire," taking on commercial projects like "Peggy Sue Got Married," "The Outsiders," "Tucker: The Man and His Dream," and "The Rainmaker." These weren't his grand artistic statements—but they paid the bills, kept Zoetrope alive, and allowed him to slowly dig himself out of bankruptcy. Ironically, those pragmatic choices—made out of financial necessity—helped preserve the creative independence that would later define his second act as a winemaker and entrepreneur.

Wine, Recovery, and Reinvention

In 1975, still riding high from the success of "The Godfather Part II," he and his wife, Eleanor, began looking for a family retreat in Napa Valley. What they found was far more than a summer home. Using profits from "The Godfather," Coppola purchased the historic Niebaum Estate for $2.2 million — a dilapidated remnant of the once-great Inglenook Winery, which had fallen into corporate neglect. At the time, Coppola knew almost nothing about winemaking, but he saw the potential to restore a piece of California's cultural history.

When "Apocalypse Now" pushed him into financial distress in the late 1970s and "One from the Heart" bankrupted him in the early 1980s, the vineyard became both a burden and a lifeline. He couldn't afford to sell it, and he couldn't afford to let it fail. So Coppola learned the business from the ground up, releasing his first vintage — "Rubicon" — in 1978. It took nearly a decade before it reached stores. In the meantime, he was living modestly, taking directing jobs like "Peggy Sue Got Married" and "The Outsiders" just to pay for grape harvests and payroll.

His financial comeback finally arrived in the early 1990s. The box-office success of "Bram Stoker's Dracula" gave him the resources to buy the remaining pieces of the Inglenook property — including its legendary chateau and front vineyards — for the first time in over a century. With that purchase, he became a legitimate vintner. The Niebaum-Coppola Estate began producing critically acclaimed wines, and Coppola launched his "Francis Ford Coppola Presents" brand, including the affordable Diamond Collection, which became a huge commercial hit.

By the late 2000s, his empire had expanded far beyond film and wine. He owned resorts in Central America, a hotel in Italy, several restaurants, and a lifestyle brand that sold everything from olive oil and pasta to cigars and fine spirits. The man who once owed nearly $100 million had reinvented himself as a multi-industry entrepreneur — a Hollywood legend who found financial redemption in the art of wine.

But for Francis Ford Coppola, comfort never lasts long. Decades after gambling his fortune on "Apocalypse Now" and "One from the Heart," he would once again risk everything on one final dream project — a film called "Megalopolis."

$120 Million "Megalopolis" Gamble

For decades, "Megalopolis" had been Francis Ford Coppola's ultimate passion project — a futuristic epic he first conceived in the early 1980s about a visionary architect trying to rebuild New York City after a disaster. He had written dozens of drafts over the years, hoping one day to bring it to life. But the 9/11 attacks made the premise — a city in ruins — feel too close to reality, and the project languished for two decades. Still, Coppola never stopped dreaming about it.

By the early 2020s, his winemaking and hospitality businesses had made him wealthy again. He decided to finally use that success to finance the film himself. He sold off two of his Bay Area wineries as part of an effort to raise $100 million to make Megalopolis exactly as he imagined it — without studio interference, without compromise, and entirely under his creative control. The final budget reached an estimated $120 million, almost all of it coming from Coppola's personal fortune.

Production began in 2023 and was immediately beset by problems. Crew members quit, union complaints surfaced, and reports emerged of erratic on-set behavior. The film's early marketing was equally chaotic: a mysterious, AI-generated trailer appeared online using fabricated critic quotes, sparking backlash before the movie even premiered.

When Megalopolis finally debuted in theaters on September 27, 2024, it was met with scathing reviews and disastrous box office numbers. Despite its A-list cast — including Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, Dustin Hoffman, Aubrey Plaza, and Laurence Fishburne — the film earned just $14 million worldwide.

"I Dont Have Any Money…"

At his financial peak, Francis Ford Coppola's net worth was well over $100 million — perhaps closer to $200 million when factoring in the value of his wineries, real estate, film catalog, royalties, and lifestyle brand. But his $120 million self-financed gamble on "Megalopolis" wiped nearly all of that away.

In March 2025, during an appearance on Rick Rubin's "Tetragrammaton" podcast, Francis spoke candidly about the fallout and his financial problems:

"I don't have any money because I invested all the money, that I borrowed, to make 'Megalopolis. It's basically gone." 

To raise money, this week Coppola announced that on December 6, he will auction off seven watches from his personal collection. The watches range in estimated value from $3,000 to $1 million, and include rare pieces by Patek Philippe, Blancpain, Breguet, and IWC.

At the center of the sale is a one-of-a-kind F.P. Journe FFC Prototype — a watch Coppola personally helped design in 2014 in collaboration with Swiss master watchmaker François-Paul Journe. The piece, which features a mechanical hand that tells time through moving fingers, originally retailed for about $1 million and could fetch far more at auction. Coppola described it as "too expensive to insure" and said he had worn it only a handful of times.

Also up for sale are two additional F.P. Journe watches valued between $120,000 and $240,000, along with a Patek Philippe Calatrava, a World Time, a Blancpain Minute Repeater, a Breguet Classique, and an IWC Chronograph.

A Life Defined by Risk

Francis Ford Coppola's story is one of art, obsession, and relentless reinvention. Few filmmakers have reached the heights he has — and even fewer have been willing to risk so much to get there. Over six decades, he has built and lost fortunes multiple times, betting everything on his vision of what cinema could be. He may be down today, but Francis Ford Coppola, the gambler, is never out.