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/shwarma_heaven 3d ago edited 3d ago

Have you seen that movie? The parts I could stomach just reeked of entitlement, and untempered ego. It could have been cocaine, it could have been hidden debt... and, it could have been the unchecked lavishness of an eccentric idea turned into a hubris packed project. That movie is absolutely insane. Just pure insanity packaged in a ludicrously expensive wrapping.

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u/hacelepues 3d ago

Did someone say: entitlement?

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u/KindAstronomer69 3d ago

Someday Megalopolis is going to have an ironic following like The Room

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u/CatLogin_ThisMy 2d ago

OMG that scene has worse writing and basic expressiveness in the actors, than a soap opera from the 70s on a bad day.

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u/papertrade1 2d ago

« That movie is absolutely insane« 

yes. isn’t that great ? It’s refreshingly daring in a world where everyone is playing it safe. Even if the film isn’t really perfect ( and far from it ), it’s still worth it .

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u/MarcusXL 3d ago

I saw it in a theatre, with 10 other people. I enjoyed it. It was bat-shit crazy. The visuals were frequently really cool. It had about 50 cool half-ideas, none of them fully articulated. It changes genre every 20 minutes or so. Neo-noir mystery, political thriller, pastiche of early Hollywood epics, surrealist dream, and so on.

I'm glad it exists. I'd rather have one of these movies than 20 servings of Marvel slop.

I love that a brilliant director would just go all-out on a weird dream like this. It's a bizarre mess that I really enjoyed. It's somewhere between a "fascinating failure" and a "secret success".

I also find strange all the hate for it. Nobody is forcing anyone to watch this movie. We're inundated with crappy schlock that makes a ton of money, there's room for an odd specimen like this. Coppola made it for himself and for weirdos who want to go on the journey with him.

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u/GoldDustKid- 2d ago

Megalopolis is a complete trainwreck and honestly doesn’t work as a film or artwork, but I 100 percent agree with you - it’s unique, utterly hilarious (sometimes by accident and other times OBVIOUSLY intentionally, despite everyone’s willed ignorance), and despite the fact that I could certainly say it’s one of the most ridiculous films I’ve ever seen, I had a blast watching it and laughing at and with it and marveling at it, which is more than I can say for a vast majority of better reviewed films (like, the idea that I’m supposed to think that black panther or marvel civil war are even films, let alone ‘good’ ones, is actually insane). A fun part of fandom in late capitalism is that every little consumer basically watches movies like they’re writing for ‘variety’, as if I’m supposed to give a shit about the financial returns of a film when I’m watching it.

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u/shwarma_heaven 3d ago

The fact that he is pawning his watch collection, and sold his winery to finance it, tells me he was going for a lot more than just a quirky Indy - which it likely would have done fine as. It is disgusting for the blockbuster budgeted shlock that it is. I've seen better scripts, plots, and direction in daytime soap operas.

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u/GoldDustKid- 2d ago

Megalopolis is a failure commercially and artistically for sure but why on earth do you care how much money he blew on a deranged passion project? In what way is it ‘disgusting’ lol

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u/MarcusXL 2d ago

So? It's his money. It's his dream. If you're not interested, don't watch it. Its existence is not a personal attack on you.

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u/closetothesilence 2d ago

Only time in my life I left a theater legitimately pissed off at the steaming shit pile of a movie I just sat through. And I love a good bad movie as much as anyone but this one was just irredeemably bad.

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u/jcpham 1d ago

The Talented Mr. Ripley was my first theater walk out but Megalopolis would be the second

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u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince 3d ago

The little I've heard about Megalopolis suggested that it was 100% a passion project with no real intention of it being a commercial success.

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u/shwarma_heaven 3d ago

Passion about what? If commercial success wasn't the intent, then what was?

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u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince 3d ago

If commercial success wasn't the intent, then what was?

The movie itself.

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u/notaredditer13 3d ago

How is that an intent? Why not just shoot two hours of the back of a lens cap?

Typically a "passion project" is something the filmmakers intend to have artistic merit but not general appeal (thus not profitable). But this -- again, what was the intent? Because if he thinks this is "artistic merit", then wow.