{"id":99317,"date":"2025-10-26T18:14:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T18:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/99317\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T18:14:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T18:14:12","slug":"godfather-trilogy-director-francis-ford-coppola-to-auction-his-rare-1-million-watch-for-this-heartbreaking-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/99317\/","title":{"rendered":"Godfather trilogy director Francis Ford Coppola to auction his rare $1 million watch for this heartbreaking reason |"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GodfatherSource Images: Getty Images Legendary \u201cThe Godfather\u201d trilogy director Francis Ford Coppola<\/a> is set to auction his rare $1 million F.P. Journe watch, and the reason is as personal as it is heartbreaking.The 85-year-old filmmaker, who recently self-financed his long-awaited epic Megalopolis, revealed that he is auctioning seven of his prized watches to \u201ckeep the ship afloat.\u201d Speaking to The New York Times from Rome via Zoom, Coppola said, \u201cI need to get some money to keep the ship afloat.\u201dThe watches, including his custom-designed F.P. Journe \u201cFFC,\u201d will go under the hammer at Phillips auction house on December 6, 2025, a leading name in luxury watch auctions.<\/p>\n

A history financial risk<\/p>\n

\"1\"Francis Ford Coppola, best known for directing The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation, has long financed his own projects, sometimes at great personal cost.In 1982, his musical One From the Heart was a box-office failure that led to years of debt. By 1992, he had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing $98 million in liabilities against $53 million in assets, according to The New York Times.Yet, Coppola rebuilt his empire, directing films, collecting luxury watches like Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet, and investing in vineyards and resorts across Northern California.<\/p>\n

The costly dream of \u2018Megalopolis\u2019<\/p>\n

In September 2024, Coppola released Megalopolis, a futuristic epic reportedly costing over $100 million to make, mostly self-financed through the sale of two of his wineries, as reported by The San Francisco Chronicle. The film earned just $14.4 million at the box office, leaving Coppola once again in financial trouble.He told producer Rick Rubin on the Tetragrammaton podcast in March 2025, \u201cI don\u2019t have any money because I invested all the money, that I borrowed, to make \u2018Megalopolis.\u2019 It\u2019s basically gone.\u201dStill, Coppola remains optimistic. Speaking to The New York Times, he noted that \u201cmany of my films earn out over time,\u201d referencing Apocalypse Now, which eventually made $150 million.<\/p>\n

Inside the $1 million F.P. Journe \u2018FFC\u2019 watch<\/p>\n

At the center of the upcoming Phillips auction is Coppola\u2019s F.P. Journe \u201cFFC\u201d, a unique watch he co-designed in 2014 with Swiss watchmaker Fran\u00e7ois-Paul Journe. The openwork timepiece, featuring a mechanical hand that tells time through finger movements, was commercially released in 2021 for around $1 million. A prototype of the same model previously sold for nearly $5 million at the Only Watch charity auction in Geneva, sponsored by Prince Albert II of Monaco.\"3\"Coppola told The New York Times, \u201cI only wore it a handful of times. It was simply too expensive to insure.\u201d Paul Boutros, Phillips\u2019 deputy chairman and head of watches for North America, told the outlet that bidding for Coppola\u2019s model will likely start at around $1 million, adding that it\u2019s \u201cless than one percent of what Coppola\u2019s film cost to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rest of Coppola\u2019s Watch Collection<\/p>\n

Other timepieces going under the hammer include:Two Patek Philippes \u2013 a Calatrava (estimated $6,000\u2013$12,000) and a World Time ($15,000\u2013$30,000)A Blancpain Minute Repeater ($15,000\u2013$30,000)An IWC Chronograph ($3,000\u2013$6,000)Another F.P. Journe ($120,000\u2013$240,000)A Breguet Classique ($4,000\u2013$6,000)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Source Images: Getty Images Legendary \u201cThe Godfather\u201d trilogy director Francis Ford Coppola is set to auction his rare…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14057,146,65994,20716,65993,65992,85,46],"class_list":["post-99317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-auction","tag-entertainment","tag-f-p-journe","tag-francis-ford-coppola","tag-godfather-trilogy","tag-godfather-trilogy-director-francis-ford-coppola","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}