Francis Ford Coppola Is Selling His $1 Million Watch to Recover ‘Megalopolis’ Outlay

• Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola is auctioning seven luxury watches at Phillips New York, citing financial strain after self-funding his sci-fi epic Megalopolis.
• The highlight is the one-of-one F.P. Journe “FFC,” co-designed by Coppola, which is estimated to fetch more than $1 million.
• The sale also includes rare Patek Philippe, Blancpain, Breguet, and IWC models.

Francis Ford Coppola is broke—well, by Hollywood standards at least. Wobbly finances have proved a recurrent theme throughout the filmmaker’s extensive career and the latest culprit is Megalopolis (2024), his long-gestated sci-fi epic that imagines America as a collapsing Rome. “I don’t have any money,” he said in March, “because I invested all the money that I borrowed to make Megalopolis.”

The film cost more than $120 million to make and Coppola sold a pair of Bay Area wineries to fund it. It was a box office flop, grossing little over $14 million. Earlier this month, he told the New York Times: “I need to get some money to keep the ship afloat.” Some of this money will hopefully arrive through the sale of seven watches that Coppola is auctioning off at Phillips New York in early December.

The centerpiece is a one-of-one timepiece that Coppola designed alongside F.P. Journe, the luxury Swiss watch brand, which is expected to raise north of $1 million. Its revolution is to replace a traditional watch hand with a literal hand, one that is gloved and whose fingers contort in various configurations depending on the hour. It’s called the FFC and one Paul Boutros, head of Phillips watches for North America, called “amongst the most important timepieces ever to appear at auction.”

The million-dollar estimate for the FFC, Boutros explained over email, is in line with the current retail price for a regular production F.P. Journe FFC. He also pointed out the previous sale of another valuable timepiece: Paul Newman’s Rolex Daytona, which fetched a record-breaking $17.8 million.

“For such ‘priceless’ watches with their extraordinary provenance, cultural significance, and uniqueness, we felt it is best to let the market decide its value on the day of the auction by using this open-ended estimate,” he added. “We already see interest from around the globe, from collectors across all backgrounds.”

The story goes that in 2009, Coppola’s wife, Eleanor, gifted him a platinum F.P. Journe fitted with a white gold dial (that watch, Chronomètre à Résonance, is also up for sale and offered with an estimate of $120,000 to $240,000). Coppola was impressed and a couple of years later arranged for a rendezvous with François Paul Journe at his Inglenook winery in the Napa Valley. Together, in a project that ran for nearly a decade, Journe and Coppola created a watch whose hand would clearly distinguish all 12 hours with its five fingers. Numbers one through six are fairly intuitive, seven through 12 slightly less so.

Artificial hand by Ambroise Pare. Photo: Getty Images.

It has an openwork design with Journe taking his inspiration for the hand itself from the 16th-century French prosthetics pioneer Ambroise Paré. It’s a taut, black-gloved thing, echoing Paré’s prosthetic hands that offered fingers movement and articulation through gear and spring mechanisms. Phillips said the FFC is the first and only Journe watch whose idea has not sprung from the mind of François-Paul.

“The challenge was formidable, exactly the type of watchmaking project I adore,” Journe, who owns another prototype of the FFC, said in a statement. “I’m proud to fully support the sale of this watch through Phillips to fund the creation of his artistic masterpieces in filmmaking.”

Chronomètre à Résonance, the watch Coppola’s wife, Eleanor, gifted him. Photo: courtesy Phillips.

Other watches that Coppola is selling are two Patek Phillipes; a Calatrava which has an estimate of $6,000 to $12,000; a World Time which has an estimate of $15,000 to $30,000; and a Blancpain Minute Repeater, which carries an estimate of $15,000 to $30,000. More affordable options include a Breguet Classique, which has an estimate of $4,000 to $6,000, and an IWC Chronograph, which has an estimate of $3,000 to $6,000.