Francis Ford Coppola Forced to Sell $1 Million Watch He Co-Designed

In the 2025 documentary Megadoc, a look behind the scenes of Francis Ford Coppola‘s epic — but much-maligned — Megalopolis, the legendary director holds himself fully accountable for the success or failure of the 2024 dystopian film, which was known to all in Hollywood as his passion project and which he self-financed at an estimated cost of $120 million (the film ultimately grossed only $14.4 million). In one interview with Megadoc director Mike Figgis, Coppola mentions French director Jacques Tati, famed for directing Mon Oncle, the 1959 Oscar winner for best foreign language film, but who died in poverty in 1982. To Coppola, Tati is one example of the art mattering more than financial success, he says. “Who cares if you died broke, if you made something you think is beautiful?”

Coppola stands by that statement, even as he believes he has found his own way to recoup a portion of the money he lost on Megalopolis, which came from both his personal savings and from selling a majority stake of his wine business to California-based Delicato Family Wines. On Dec. 6 and 7 in New York City, auction house Phillips will present a sale of seven status timepieces from Coppola’s collection, including a one-of-a-kind watch that was another passion project between the director and independent watchmaker François-Paul Journe, a rock star in the universe of high-end timepieces.

Among Coppola’s seven watches in the New York sale is the F.P. Journe FFC Prototype, a one-of-a-kind watch that started as a suggestion from the filmmaker to the watchmaker during a dinner at Coppola’s Napa Valley home in 2012. “Coppola asked Journe whether in all of human history a timepiece had been made using a hand to indicate the time,” explains Paul Boutros, deputy chairman and head of watches, Americas, for Phillips. “That led to an ongoing dialogue as they worked together to figure out how a hand could be used to indicate 12 hours; how do you get 12 digits out of five fingers?”

Nine years and many conversations later, Journe presented Coppola with the finished watch, at roughly the same time filming for Megalopolis was getting underway in 2021. The F.P. Journe FCC Prototype indeed features a black-treated titanium hand — inspired by a 16th-century prosthetic design by French surgeon Ambroise Paré — which tells the time via the fingers and thumb extending or retracting in a set of sequences that indicate different hours, while the minutes are determined by a white rotating ring around the open-work dial’s perimeter, all set in a 42mm platinum case. Journe made a similar Prototype watch for himself, while a third was crafted with a blue titanium hand and included in the 2021 Only Watch auction for charity, where it fetched 4.5 million Swiss francs. Journe has since sold a small number of a production version of the Prototype watch to private clients for roughly $1 million each.

That latter number became the basis for the estimate of Coppola’s watch, which the filmmaker wore when Megalopolis premiered at Cannes in May 2024. “We priced it in line with what the retail price would be if someone tried to buy a new piece,” Boutros tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We don’t know how the market will price [Coppola’s watch], so we adopted the same strategy when we sold Paul Newman’s Paul Newman [Rolex]. We’re going to let the market decide, but we know it’s worth at least $1 million.” Newman’s 1968 Rolex Cosmograph Daytona sold at Phillips in 2017 for $17.8 million, setting a record for a vintage wristwatch that has not yet been broken.

The other unique element about this sale is that it comes with Journe’s stamp of approval. “Speaking with Francis in 2012 and hearing his idea on the use of a human hand to indicate time inspired me to create a watch I never could have imagined myself,” Journe said in a statement released by Phillips. “The challenge was formidable — exactly the type of watchmaking project I adore. After years of collaborating directly with Francis in the development process, it was a great pleasure to deliver this FFC prototype to him in 2021. I’m proud to fully support the sale of this watch through Phillips to fund the creation of his artistic masterpieces in filmmaking.”

“He doesn’t like it when clients sell their timepieces, but he understands what this is all about,” Boutros adds. “Like Coppola, François-Paul is an artist, he takes chances, and sometimes he goes all in when pursuing his craft. In that way they are very much alike. Still, having the support of the watchmaker [in a sale] is a rare thing.”

Part of a series of events to celebrate Phillips’ 10th anniversary, Coppola’s sale of seven watches includes another F.P. Journe, the Chronomètre à Résonance, a Christmas gift to the filmmaker from his wife, Eleanor Coppola, who died in 2024. An advertisement for the Résonance, which Francis Ford Coppola saved and was later found by his wife, leading to the gift, accompanies the watch, Boutros says. “They were married for 62 years, and he talked about her while we were in Rome together shooting a video about the sale,” Boutros notes. “It’s clear that he misses her. But what also comes through is his sincerity and his integrity. He’s so down to earth, so humble, so kind.” The Résonance’s auction estimate is $120,000 to $240,000.

The remaining five watches in the Coppola sale include a Patek Philippe World Time ref. 5130G, estimated to sell for between $15,000 to $30,000; a Patek Philippe Calatrava ref. 3919, which carries an estimate of $6,000 to $12,000; and a Blancpain Minute Repeater estimated to sell for $15,000 to $30,000. Two watches, meanwhile, carry no reserve, which Boutros notes could be an opportunity for burgeoning collectors: a Breguet Classique ref. 5140, which is estimated between $4,000 to $8,000, and an IWC Portugieser, which carries a no-reserve estimate of $3,000 to $6,000. All watches will be on display at Phillips’ New York showroom Dec. 3 through 5.

The one-of-a-kind watch and its backstory aside, what does this group of pieces say about Coppola’s collecting style? “He’s a person who loves to preserve history, and we saw that already with the decades he spent trying to piece his winery back together,” Boutros says. “He started falling in love with watches in 2008 or 2009, and from the start he sought out watches the offered a rich history. He loves the history of Abraham-Louis Breguet making the first pocket watches in the 1770s and 1780s, or Blancpain’s design for a great chiming mechanism. He’s always been very smart in buying models with a great historical past. That really appealed to him.”

Overall it’s a respectable group, with a pair of icons at its center — both the Prototype watch and its owner, that is. But just as Coppola discussed with Figgis in Megadoc, he is wholly pragmatic about this decision. ‘He is trying to raise funds to offset some debt,’” Boutros says. “That’s the reality of life, and he’s someone who goes all in and puts everything on the line. You have to respect that.”