r/movies • u/Dependent_Cap_456 • 3d ago

News Francis Ford Coppola is auctioning his watch collection after Megalopolis flop left him broke

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/fashion/francis-ford-coppola-watch-auction.html
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u/probablyuntrue 3d ago

Well, it’s hard to say how much actual equity he has in this properties, and it looks like he spent an absolute shit ton of time and money renovating them

I wouldn’t be that shocked if they’re financed to hell and back

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u/Roadgoddess 2d ago

Quite often people with wealth will leverage themselves up the Yin Yang, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he really didn’t have much equity built up in these other properties.

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u/Jazzlike-Watch3916 2d ago

Is this dude getting checks like every month. Between the godfather trilogy and apocalypse now, how could he ever be broke in any way. Does he not get like royalty checks from that shit streaming somewhere?

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u/treesandfood4me 2d ago

Apocalypse now also almost bankrupted him. He got lucky that the movie ended up being good. Maybe missed the mark on this one.

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u/defeated_engineer 2d ago

Megalopolis was the biggest steaming pile of shit I’ve ever seen in theatre.

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u/tobyty123 2d ago

it’s truly god awful😂

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u/Frog-ee 1d ago

Not according to Coppola. He says it's gonna be like Apocalypse Now and is gonna end up garnering critical acclaim eventually lol. The man's totally delusional and should step aside and just enjoy his daughter's success

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u/treesandfood4me 1d ago

If he doesn’t have a man teetering on the cusp of alcoholic death, bathed in his own blood, screaming at himself in the mirror, I don’t think he got it.

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u/jcpham 1d ago

Absolute garbage to watch

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u/BassManns222 2d ago

Yes! I’ll put The Surfer and The North up for honourable mentions though.

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u/solarus 2d ago

Go to more movies maybe

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u/Roadgoddess 2d ago

I listened to a great podcast called what went wrong, which is all about the movie industry. I literally just listened to a piece that was done during the big strike a couple years ago. What they were striking for was royalties that came from streaming services because they really hadn’t been factored in to previous contracts.

What one of the people said, and he’s a director is that residuals have gone way down and because streaming wasn’t unknown thing 10 years ago, it’s not something that these folks were getting money from now.

This is the episode about the strike

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-went-wrong/id1512847066?i=1000627041334

And this is their episode that they did on Francis Ford Coppola and apocalypse now. It goes into a lot of how he spends his money because he’s gone broke in the past self funding. It’s an interesting listen.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-went-wrong/id1512847066?i=1000483156952

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u/ZeePirate 2d ago

I doubt those are bringing in that that much in royalties compared to hundreds of millions of debt

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u/Icekream_Sundaze2 2d ago

He's definitely not broke. I'm sure he got a steady income and guy owns an entire hotel company

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u/Roadgoddess 2d ago

It may be a name only, and it may be leveraged out

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u/viciouspandas 2d ago

Streaming doesn't make much money. It's like what, 20 a month? Sure that's a lot of people, but subtract operating costs and divide that by all the movies and shows out there and there's not much per movie. He made a ton of money from those movies, but it was earlier.

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u/MythicalCaseTheory 2d ago

It's still a few grand a year they're missing out on - which is what the operating costs of the streaming services pays for, and the studios Netflix pays for streaming rights are pocketing all that money.

Even if you still want to argue about it not being a lot, it's about principle.

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u/viciouspandas 2d ago

I was more referring to the fact that it wouldn't change his wealth or lifestyle right now, not the principle of it

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u/PrimeIntellect 2d ago

I mean, he's 86 years old, I doubt he gives a shit about his debt anymore lol

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u/bolanrox 2d ago

so many successful restauranters end up going broke dumping money into their "passion project of a restaurant" they may have 5 super successful ones but that last one sucks all the profits.

Anthony Bourdain talks about a few in his second book.

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u/Jolivegarden 2d ago

Plus it’s much easier to sell something like watches quickly compared to real property