Oscar-winning filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola has sold his private island in Belize to help pay off the debts he incurred on the box office flop of his epic production “Megalopolis.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Coppola received $1.8 million for the sale of Coral Caye, an eight-mile long, 2.5-acre island accessible through a 25-minute boat ride from the Belize coast. Coppola has leased the island for the last nine years.
The sale comes in the wake of the disastrous reception to Coppola’s 2024 film “Megalopolis,” which he self-financed for $120 million. To date, the film grossed only $14.4 million worldwide.
Coppola – whose best-known films include “The Godfather” trilogy and “Apocalypse Now” – acknowledged his financial pressures in March interview on the Tetragrammaton podcast, stating, “I don’t have any money because I invested all the money that I borrowed to make ‘Megalopolis.’ It’s basically gone. I think it’ll come back over 15 or 20 years, but I don’t have it now.”
Coppola also made a highly publicized sale of his one-of-a-kind F.P. Journe watch for at least $1 million to help mitigate his debts.
Photo: Adam Driver in a scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.”
Overconfidence and poor financial planning and financing strategies foot this project has seriously hurt a fantastically successful individual. I hope he recovers quickly (which I’m sure he will) and let it be a lesson for all of us that if you can’t fund your project without putting all your personal eggs in that one basket, it may be that it’s just not meant to be for a reason.
Don’t have a dog in this flop movi, but a sale of assets totaling $3million or so doesn’t seem to add up.