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Francis Ford Coppola ( ; born April 7, 1939) is an American filmmaker. Considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood era as well as one of the pioneers of the Gangster film, Coppola is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Coppola is the recipient of five Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Palmes d'Or, in addition to nominations for two Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award. Coppola was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 2010, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2024, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2025.
Coppola started his career directing The Rain People (1969) and co-writing Patton (1970), the latter of which earned him and Edmund H. North the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Coppola's reputation as a filmmaker was cemented with the release of The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974) which both earned Academy Awards for Best Picture, and the latter earned him Best Director. The films revolutionized the gangster film. Coppola released the thriller The Conversation (1974), which received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
His next film, the Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now (1979), had and also won the Palme d'Or, making Coppola one of only ten filmmakers to have won the award twice. He later directed films such as The Outsiders and Rumble Fish (both 1983), The Cotton Club (1984), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), The Godfather Part III (1990), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), and The Rainmaker (1997). He also produced American Graffiti (1973), The Black Stallion (1979), and The Secret Garden (1993). Dissatisfied with the studio system, he transitioned to independent and experimental filmmaking with Youth Without Youth (2007), Tetro (2009), Twixt (2011), and Megalopolis (2024).
Coppola's father Carmine Coppola was a composer whose music featured in his son's films. Many of Coppola family have found success in film: his sister Talia Shire is an actress, his daughter Sofia Coppola is a director, his son Roman Coppola is a screenwriter and his nephews Jason Schwartzman and Nicolas Cage are actors. Coppola resides in Napa, California, and since the 2010s has been a Winemaker, owning a family-branded winery of his own.
Francis is the middle of three children: his older brother was August Coppola, and his younger sister is actress Talia Shire.
Two years after Coppola's birth, his father was named principal flutist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Arturo Toscanini, and the family moved to New York. They settled in Woodside, Queens, where Coppola spent the remainder of his childhood.
Having contracted polio as a boy, Coppola was bedridden for large periods of his childhood, during which he did homemade puppet theater productions. He developed an interest in theater after reading A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) at age 15. He created 8 mm feature films edited from home movies with titles such as The Rich Millionaire and The Lost Wallet. Although Coppola was a mediocre student, his interest in technology and engineering earned him the childhood nickname "Science". He trained initially for a career in music and became proficient in the tuba, eventually earning a music scholarship to the New York Military Academy. In all, Coppola attended 23 schools before he eventually graduated from Great Neck North High School.
He entered Hofstra University in 1955 as a theater arts major. There, he was awarded a scholarship in playwriting. This furthered his interest in directing theater, though his father disapproved and wanted him to study engineering. Coppola was profoundly impressed by Sergei Eisenstein's film (1928), especially the quality of its Film editing, and decided to pursue cinema rather than theater. He said he was influenced to become a writer by his brother August. Coppola also credits the work of Elia Kazan for influencing him as a writer and director. Coppola's classmates at Hofstra included James Caan, Lainie Kazan and radio artist Joe Frank. He later cast Kazan and Caan in his films.
While pursuing his bachelor's degree, Coppola was elected president of the university's drama group, The Green Wig, and its musical comedy club, the Kaleidoscopians. He merged the two groups into The Spectrum Players, and under his leadership, the group staged a new production each week. Coppola also founded the cinema workshop at Hofstra and contributed prolifically to the campus literary magazine. He won three D. H. Lawrence Awards for theatrical production and direction and received a Beckerman Award for his outstanding contributions to the school's theater arts division. While a graduate student, Coppola studied under professor Dorothy Arzner, whose encouragement was later acknowledged as pivotal to Coppola's career.
In the early 1960s, Coppola made $10 per week (roughly equivalent to $ per week today). Looking for a way to earn some extra money, he found that many colleagues from film school made money filming erotic productions known as "nudie-cuties" or "skin flicks", which showed nudity without implying any sexual act. At 21, Coppola wrote the script for The Peeper, a short comedy film about a Voyeurism who tries to spy on a sensual photo shoot in the studio next to his apartment. Coppola found an interested producer, who gave him $3,000 to shoot the film. He hired Playboy Bunny Marli Renfro to play the model and had his friend Karl Schanzer play the voyeur. With The Peeper finished, Coppola found that the cartoonish aspects of the film alienated potential buyers, who did not find the 12-minute short exciting enough to screen in adult theaters.
After much rejection, Coppola received an opportunity from Premier Pictures Company, a small production company that invested in The Wide Open Spaces, an erotic western written and directed by Jerry Schafer, which had been shelved for more than a year. Both Schafer's film and The Peeper featured Renfro, so the producers paid Coppola $500 to combine the two films. After Coppola re-edited the picture, it was released as the softcore comedy Tonight for Sure (1962). Another production company, Screen Rite Pictures, hired Coppola to do a similar job: re-cutting the German film ( Sin Began with Eve), directed by Fritz Umgelter. Coppola added new color footage with British model June Wilkinson and other nude starlets. The re-edited film was released as The Bellboy and the Playgirls. That same year, producer/director Roger Corman hired Coppola as an assistant. Corman first tasked Coppola with dubbing and re-editing the Soviet science fiction film Nebo Zovyot (1959), which Coppola turned into the sex-and-violence monster movie Battle Beyond the Sun (1962). Impressed by Coppola's perseverance and dedication, Corman hired him as a dialogue director for Tower of London (1962), sound man for The Young Racers (1963) and associate producer and one of many uncredited directors for The Terror (1963).
Coppola's first feature film was Dementia 13 (1963). While on location in Ireland for The Young Racers, Corman persuaded Coppola to use that film's leftover funds to make a low-budget horror movie. Coppola wrote a brief draft in one night, incorporating elements from Alfred Hitchcock Psycho, and the result impressed Corman enough to give the go-ahead. On a budget of $40,000 ($20,000 from Corman and $20,000 from another producer who wanted to buy the movie's English rights), Coppola directed Dementia 13 over the course of nine days. The film recouped its expenses and later became a cult film among horror buffs. It was on the set of Dementia 13 that Coppola met the woman he would marry, Eleanor Coppola.
In 1965, Coppola won the annual Samuel Goldwyn Award for best screenplay written by a UCLA student for Pilma, Pilma. The honor secured him a job as a scriptwriter with Seven Arts. During this time, Coppola also co-wrote the scripts for This Property Is Condemned (1966) and Is Paris Burning? (1966). Coppola bought the rights to David Benedictus's novel You're a Big Boy Now (1963) and merged it with a story idea of his own, resulting in his UCLA thesis project You're a Big Boy Now (1966), which earned him his Master of Fine Arts Degree from UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in 1967. "Profile: Francis Ford Coppola" , UCLA School of Theater, Film, and television, Executive Board The film also received a theatrical release via Warner Bros. and earned critical acclaim.
Following the success of You're a Big Boy Now, Coppola was offered to work on an adaptation of the musical Finian's Rainbow starring dance legend Fred Astaire and Petula Clark in her first American film. Producer Jack L. Warner was not impressed by Coppola's shaggy-haired, bearded, "hippie" appearance and generally left him to his own devices. Coppola took the cast to the Napa Valley for much of the outdoor shooting, but those scenes were in sharp contrast to those filmed on a Hollywood soundstage, resulting in a disjointed look. Nonetheless, Finian's Rainbow (1968) was a critical and commercial success. Clark received a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination. The film introduced Coppola to George Lucas, who became a lifelong friend and a production assistant on his next film.
The Rain People (1969) was written, directed, and initially produced by Coppola himself, though as the movie advanced, he exceeded his budget and the studio had to underwrite the remainder of the movie. It won the Golden Shell at the 1969 San Sebastián International Film Festival. Coppola wanted to subvert the studio system, which he felt had stifled his visions, intending to produce mainstream pictures to finance off-beat projects and give first-time directors a chance. While touring Europe, Coppola was introduced to alternative filmmaking equipment and, inspired by the Bohemianism spirit of Lanterna Film, decided he would build a deviant studio that would conceive and implement unconventional approaches to filmmaking. He decided to name his future studio "Zoetrope" after receiving a gift of from Mogens Scot-Hansen, founder of Lanterna Film. Upon his return home, Coppola and Lucas searched for a mansion in Marin County to house the studio. However, in 1969, with equipment flowing in and no mansion found yet, the first home for Zoetrope Studio was a warehouse in San Francisco on Folsom Street. Andrew Sarris, in The American Cinema (1968), wrote: "Coppola is probably the first reasonably talented and sensibly adaptable directorial talent to emerge from a university curriculum in film-making ... He may be heard from more decisively in the future."Andrew Sarris (1968). The American Cinema (Paperback ed.). New York, NY: EP Dutton and Co., Inc. p. 210.
When the title role was offered to George C. Scott, he remembered having read Coppola's screenplay earlier. He stated flatly that he would accept the part only if they used Coppola's script. "Scott is the one who resurrected my version," said Coppola.
The movie opens with Scott's rendering of Patton's famous military "Pep Talk" to members of the Third Army, set against a huge American flag. Coppola and North had to tone down Patton's actual language to avoid an R rating; in the opening monologue, the word "fornicating" replaced "fucking" when criticizing The Saturday Evening Post. Over the years, this opening monologue has become an iconic scene and has spawned parodies in numerous films, political cartoons, and television shows.
Coppola was officially announced as director of the film on September 28, 1970. He agreed to receive $125,000 and six percent of the gross rentals. Coppola later found a deeper theme for the material and decided it should be not just be a film about organized crime, but also a family saga and a metaphor for capitalism in America. The story follows the Corleone family as patriarch Vito Corleone passes the reins of power to his son Michael Corleone. There was disagreement between Paramount and Coppola on casting; Coppola wanted to cast Marlon Brando as Vito, though Paramount wanted either Ernest Borgnine or Danny Thomas. Orson Welles was also considered. At one point, Coppola was told by the then-president of Paramount that "Marlon Brando will never appear in this motion picture." After pleading with the executives, Coppola was allowed to cast Brando only if he appeared in the film for much less money than his previous films, would perform a screen test, and put up a bond saying that he would not cause a delay in the production (as he had done on previous film sets). The Godfather DVD Collection documentary A Look Inside, 2001 Coppola chose Brando over Borgnine on the basis of Brando's screen test, which also won over the Paramount leadership. Coppola would later recall:
The film was a critical and commercial success, setting the box office record. Pauline Kael wrote:
Coppola, a young director who has never had a big hit, may have done the movie for money, as he claims—in order to make the pictures he really wants to make, he says—but this picture was made at peak capacity. He has salvaged Puzo’s energy and lent the narrative dignity. Given the circumstances and the rush to complete the film and bring it to market, Coppola has not only done his best but pushed himself farther than he may realize. The movie is on the heroic scale of earlier pictures on broad themes, such as On the Waterfront, From Here to Eternity, and The Nun’s Story. It offers a wide, startlingly vivid view of a Mafia dynasty. The abundance is from the book; the quality of feeling is Coppola’s ... The direction is tenaciously intelligent. Coppola holds on and pulls it all together. The trash novel is there underneath, but he attempts to draw the patterns out of the particulars. It’s amazing how encompassing the view seems to be—what a sense you get of a broad historical perspective, considering that the span is only from 1945 to the mid-fifties, at which time the Corleone family, already forced by competitive pressures into dealing in narcotics, is moving its base of operations to Las Vegas.
In addition to Brando, the film starred Al Pacino, James Caan, John Cazale and Robert Duvall. It featured Richard Castellano, Sterling Hayden, Diane Keaton and Coppola's sister Talia Shire. Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor, which he refused to accept. The film won Best Picture and the Best Adapted Screenplay. Coppola was nominated for Best Director but lost to Bob Fosse for Cabaret. For the film score, Coppola commissioned Nino Rota, who had scored many Fellini films. Gordon Willis's chiaroscuro cinematography was acclaimed, as was Dean Tavoularis's period production design.
The film routinely ranks near the top of polls for the greatest movies ever. It was ranked third, behind Citizen Kane (1941) and Casablanca (1942), on the American Film Institute's inaugural AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list in 1997. In 2007, it had moved to second place, ahead of Casablanca and behind Kane. David Thomson writes that " The Godfather deserved all its success because it had the nerve to take its 175 minutes slowly ... It has a calm faith in narrative control that had not been current in Hollywood for twenty years. It was like a film of the forties in its nostalgic decor; its command of great supporting actors; in Gordon Willis's bold exploration of a film noir in color; and in its fascination with evil."
The movie received tremendous critical acclaim, with many deeming it superior to its predecessor. Kael wrote:
Coppola has plunged us back into the sensuality and terror of the first film. And, with the relentlessness of a master, he goes farther and farther. The daring of Part II is that it enlarges the scope and deepens the meaning of the first film ... The first film covered the period from 1945 to the mid-fifties. Part II, contrasting the early manhood of Vito (played by Robert De Niro) with the life of Michael, his inheritor (AI Pacino), spans almost seventy years. We saw only the middle of the story in the first film; now we have the beginning and the end. Structurally, the completed work is nothing less than the rise and decay of an American dynasty of unofficial rulers ... Part II has the same mythic and operatic visual scheme as the first; once again the cinematographer is Gordon Willis. Visually the film is, however, far more complexly beautiful than the first, just as it’s thematically richer, more shadowed, more full. Willis’s workmanship has developed, like Coppola’s; even the sequences in the sunlight have deep tones — elegiac yet lyrical, as in The Conformist, and always serving the narrative, as the Nino Rota score also does.
In addition to Pacino, Cazale, Duvall, Keaton and Shire reprised their roles from the first film. Newcomers included Michael V. Gazzo and Pacino's mentor Lee Strasberg. The Godfather Part II was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won six, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director. De Niro won Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Vito, making him and Brando the first actors to win Oscars for playing the same character. The film ranked at No. 32 on AFI's inaugural 100 Years...100 Movies list, maintaining its position ten years later. It is ranked No. 1 on TV Guide "50 Best Movies of All Time" and at No. 7 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "100 Greatest Movies of All Time". Together, the two Godfathers placed at No. 4 on Sight & Sound 2002 list of the ten greatest films of all time. Thomson writes that "it exhibited a mastery of so many periods and locations as to be entrancing." It was one of the last major American motion pictures to be filmed in Technicolor.
Apocalypse Now premiered at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, where Coppola made grandiose claims, among them: "My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam." Despite such pronouncements, and complaints from critics that the film's message was confused, it shared the Palme d'Or with Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum and won Oscars for Best Cinematography (Vittorio Storaro) and Best Sound (Murch, Mark Berger, Richard Beggs and Nat Boxer.) Roger Ebert wrote:
The film's reputation has grown and it is now regarded by many as a masterpiece of the New Hollywood and is frequently cited as one of the greatest movies ever made, ranking at Number 19 on the 2022 Sight and Sound poll. For the film, Murch was the first person to receive a credit as a Sound Designer.
The documentary (1991), directed by George Hickenlooper, Fax Bahr and Francis's wife, Eleanor Coppola, who was present through the production, chronicles the difficulties the crew went through making Apocalypse Now and features behind-the-scenes footage filmed by Eleanor. Coppola famously stated, "We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment and little by little, we went insane."
In 1983, he directed The Outsiders, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton. Coppola credited his inspiration for making the film to a suggestion from middle school students who had read the novel. The Outsiders is notable for being the breakout film for a number of young actors who would go on to become major stars, including Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio and C. Thomas Howell. Also in the cast were Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Diane Lane, Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe (in his film debut). Carmine Coppola wrote and edited the score, including the title song "Stay Gold", which was based on Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and performed by Stevie Wonder. He directed Rumble Fish, filmed at the same time as The Outsiders on-location in Tulsa, Oklahoma and based on the novel of the same name by Hinton, who co-wrote the screenplay. Shot in black-and-white as an homage to German expressionism, Rumble Fish centers on the relationship between a revered former gang leader (Mickey Rourke) and his younger brother, Rusty James (Dillon). The film bombed at the box office, earning a meager $2.5 million against a $10 million budget.
In 1984, Coppola directed the Robert Evans-produced The Cotton Club, based on the novel by James Haskins and centered on the eponymous Harlem jazz club. The film was nominated for several awards, including the Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Picture (Drama) and Oscars for Best Film Editing and Best Art-Direction. However, the film failed at the box-office, earning only $25.9 million of the $47.9 million privately invested by brothers Fred and Ed Doumani. Greatest Box-Office Bombs, Disasters and Flops of All-Time . Retrieved October 18, 2010. The same year, he directed "Rip Van Winkle", an adaptation of Washington Irving's short story starring Harry Dean Stanton for Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre.
In 1986, Coppola directed Captain EO, a 17-minute space fantasy for Disney theme parks executive produced by George Lucas and starring Michael Jackson. Coppola, formerly a member of Writers Guild of America West, left and maintained financial core status in 1986. Also in 1986, Coppola released the comedy Peggy Sue Got Married starring Kathleen Turner, Jim Carrey and Coppola's nephew Nicolas Cage. The film earned Coppola positive reviews and Turner her first and only Oscar nomination. It was Coppola's first box-office success since The Outsiders and ranked number 17 on Entertainment Weeklys list of "50 Best High School Movies". That same year, Coppola appeared on the March 22 episode of Saturday Night Live where he was part of a storyline where NBC hired him to direct the show in an attempt to boost SNL's sagging ratings.
The following year, Coppola re-teamed with James Caan for Gardens of Stone, but the film was overshadowed by the death of Coppola's eldest son Gian-Carlo during the film's production. The movie was not a critical success and underperformed commercially, earning only $5.6 million against a $13 million budget. Coppola directed the year after that. The film is a biopic based on the life of Preston Tucker and his attempt to produce and market the Tucker '48; Coppola had originally conceived the project as a musical with Brando leading. Ultimately, it was Jeff Bridges who played the role of Tucker. Budgeted at $24 million, the film received positive reviews and earned three nominations at the 62nd Academy Awards, but grossed a disappointing $19.65 million at the box office. It garnered two awards: Martin Landau won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and Dean Tavoularis took BAFTA's honors for Best Production Design.
In 1989, Coppola teamed up with fellow Oscar-winners Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen for the anthology film New York Stories. Coppola directed the "Life Without Zoë" segment, starring Shire and co-written with his daughter Sofia Coppola. "Life Without Zoë" was mostly panned by critics and was generally considered to be the segment that brought the film's overall quality down. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post wrote a particularly scathing review, stating: "It's impossible to know what Francis Coppola's Life Without Zoë is. Co-written with his daughter Sofia, the film is a mystifying embarrassment; it's by far the director's worst work yet." Zoetrope Studios finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1990, after which its name was changed to American Zoetrope.
In September 2020, for the film's 30th anniversary, it was announced that a new cut of the film titled Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone would have a limited theatrical release in December 2020 followed by digital and Blu-ray. Coppola said the film is the version he and Puzo had originally envisioned, and it "vindicates" its status among the trilogy and his daughter Sofia's performance.
According to Coppola, starting from this film onwards, he stopped working as a "professional director", preferring to act more like a student who tried to understand what meant making a film, choosing to self-finance some "very small, low-budget" movies. Thus, those films weren't meant to be successful but instead teach him what making films really mean, learning a lout about acting to the point of carrying out unusual rehearsals.
A. O. Scott wrote: " Apocalypse Now Redux arrives in this slack season to remind us of a lost era of visionary cinema, a time of creative self-confidence that frequently flirted with hubris, but also a time of risk taking and high seriousness. The artistic vision on display in Apocalypse Now -- the divine madness that inspired Mr. Coppola to risk his health, his sanity, his fortune and the well-being of his cast, crew and family -- is ultimately less impressive, and less important to the film's durable power, than the art itself."
In 2005, Coppola created a new cut of The Outsiders for home video. This version, titled The Outsiders: The Complete Novel, added more than 20 minutes of footage and removed three scenes, bringing the film's runtime from 91 minutes to 114 minutes. It also added new music by Michael Seifert and Dave Pruitt and several period songs to Carmine Coppola's score. Coppola included both the theatrical cut and "The Complete Novel" on all subsequent home video releases.
In 2009, Coppola released Tetro. It was set in Argentina, with the reunion of two brothers. The story follows the rivalries born out of creative differences passed down through generations of an artistic Italian diaspora family. The film received generally positive reviews from critics. The Rotten Tomatoes site's consensus was: "A complex meditation on family dynamics, Tetro arresting visuals and emotional core compensate for its uneven narrative." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars, praising it for being "boldly operatic, involving family drama, secrets, generations at war, melodrama, romance and violence", Ebert also praised Vincent Gallo's performance and claimed that Alden Ehrenreich is "the new Leonardo DiCaprio". Todd McCarthy of Variety gave the film a B+, judging that "when Coppola finds creative nirvana, he frequently has trouble delivering the full goods". Richard Corliss of Time gave the film a mixed review, praising Ehrenreich's performance, but claiming Coppola "has made a movie in which plenty happens, but nothing rings true". The film made $2,636,774 worldwide, against a budget of $5,000,000.
Twixt, starring Val Kilmer, Elle Fanning, Joanne Whalley, and Bruce Dern, and narrated by Tom Waits, was released to film festivals in late 2011 and was released theatrically in early 2012. It received critical acclaim in France, but mostly negative reviews elsewhere.
In 2015, Coppola stated Distant Vision is a semi-autobiographical unfinished live broadcast project created in real-time. Proof of concepts were tested before limited audiences at Oklahoma City Community College in June 2015 and UCLA School of Theater in July 2016.
After finishing work on The Cotton Club, Coppola began work on a director's cut of his first movie, Dementia 13. For this film, Coppola removed several minutes of footage that had been added by the film's producer, Roger Corman. In 2019, he followed it up with another director's cut of Apocalypse Now, this time called "The Final Cut". It removed 20 minutes of footage that had been included in Apocalypse Now Redux and restored the film from the original negative for the first time.
In December 2020, a Re-edited film of Godfather III, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone had a limited theatrical release, followed by digital and Blu-ray release in 2021. Coppola stated that The Godfather: Part IV was never made because Mario Puzo died before they had a chance to write the film. Andy García has since claimed the film's script was nearly produced.
Coppola's most recent director's cut to date was B'Twixt Now and Sunrise, a shortened version of his film Twixt. It was given a select re-release in 2022.
At the 94th Academy Awards, they celebrated the 50th anniversary of The Godfather. Coppola attended alongside Robert De Niro and Al Pacino who were greeted with a standing ovation.
In August 2021, it was announced that Coppola had begun discussions with actors for the project and that he was aiming to begin principal photography in the fall of 2022. In April 2022, it was reported that filming was to take place from September 6, 2022, to February 2, 2023. In May 2022, the star cast was revealed: Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, and Laurence Fishburne. In July, it was reported that filming would instead begin in November 2022 at Trilith Studios in Fayetteville, Georgia. In August, it was revealed that Aubrey Plaza, Talia Shire, Shia LaBeouf, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Laurence Fishburne, James Remar, and Grace VanderWaal joined the cast. In early October, it was announced that Chloe Fineman, Dustin Hoffman, Bailey Ives, Isabelle Kusman, and D.B. Sweeney would also be joining the cast.
On February 29, 2024, Deadline reported that Megalopolis will be released in IMAX in Fall 2024. On April 9, 2024, it was revealed that Megalopolis would be premiering in competition at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.
However, in mid-1991, Coppola and Warner Bros. came to a disagreement over the compensation to Coppola for his directing services on Pinocchio. In 1994, Coppola later approached another studio, Columbia Pictures, to produce the film. Warner Brothers then wrote to Columbia, stating it had held the rights to Coppola's project, which led to Columbia later dropping the project. Coppola filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros, alleging they had wrongfully prevented Columbia Pictures from making the film.
The parties deferred this issue and a settlement was finally reached on July 3, 1998, when the jurors in the resultant court case awarded Coppola $20 million as compensation for losing the Pinocchio film project. On that same day, Warner Bros. stated it would appeal the decision. A week later, Coppola was awarded a further $60 million in punitive damages on top, stemming from his charges that Warner Bros. sabotaged his intended version. However, in October 1998, then-Superior Court Judge Madeleine Flier reversed the jury's $60 million award to Coppola. Warner Bros. and Coppola then appealed each other's ruling, in which Coppola sought to have his $60 million award restored. In March 2001, the California Court of Appeals decided against Coppola on both counts. In July 2001, the California Supreme Court refused to hear the appellate decision, bringing the litigation battle to a conclusive end.
In August 2021, Coppola sold Francis Ford Coppola Winery and Virginia Dare Winery to Delicato Family Wines.
After purchasing the property, he produced wine under the Niebaum-Coppola label. He purchased the former Inglenook Winery chateau in 1995, and renamed it to Rubicon Estate Winery in 2006. On April 11, 2011, Coppola acquired the Inglenook trademark paying more, he said, for the trademark than he did for the entire estate and announced that the estate would once again be known by its historic original name, Inglenook. Its grapes are entirely organically grown.
In 1997, Coppola co-founded with Adrienne Brodeur, the literary magazine which was devoted to short stories and design. The magazine publishes fiction by emerging writers alongside more recognizable names, such as Woody Allen, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, Alice Munro, Don DeLillo, Mary Gaitskill, and Edward Albee; as well as essays, including ones from Mario Vargas Llosa, David Mamet, Steven Spielberg, and Salman Rushdie. Each issue is designed, in its entirety, by a prominent artist, one usually working outside his / her expected field. Previous guest designers include Gus Van Sant, Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson, Marjane Satrapi, Guillermo del Toro, David Bowie, David Byrne, and Dennis Hopper. Coppola serves as founding editor and publisher of All-Story.
Eleanor Coppola died on April 12, 2024, at the age of 87.
Coppola's selections were:
| +Directed features | ||
| 1963 | Dementia 13 | American International Pictures |
| 1966 | You're a Big Boy Now | Warner Bros.-Seven Arts |
| 1968 | Finian's Rainbow | |
| 1969 | ||
| 1972 | Paramount Pictures | |
| 1974 | ||
| 1979 | Apocalypse Now | United Artists |
| 1982 | One from the Heart | Columbia Pictures |
| 1983 | Warner Bros. | |
| Rumble Fish | Universal Pictures | |
| 1984 | Orion Pictures | |
| 1986 | Peggy Sue Got Married | TriStar Pictures |
| 1987 | Gardens of Stone | |
| 1988 | Paramount Pictures | |
| 1990 | ||
| 1992 | Bram Stoker's Dracula | Columbia Pictures |
| 1996 | Jack | Buena Vista Pictures |
| 1997 | Paramount Pictures | |
| 2007 | Youth Without Youth | Sony Pictures Classics |
| 2009 | Tetro | American Zoetrope |
| 2011 | Twixt | 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment |
| 2024 | Megalopolis | Lionsgate Films |
On October 15, 2024, after having received the statue of the Capitoline Wolf, Rome's highest honor, a street in the same capital city was named after him as a further sign of the connection between the filmmaker and the city. In 2024, he was honored by the Kennedy Center. Introducing him, his friend George Lucas said: “What Francis does creatively is jump off cliffs. When you spend enough time with Francis, you begin to believe you can jump off cliffs, too.” He is scheduled to receive the AFI Life Achievement Award in April, 2025.
+ Awards and nominations received for films directed by Coppola 1966 You're a Big Boy Now 1 1 3 1968 Finian's Rainbow 2 5 1972 The Godfather 10 3 5 1 7 6 1974 The Conversation 3 5 2 4 The Godfather Part II 11 6 4 1 6 1979 Apocalypse Now 8 2 9 2 4 3 1982 One from the Heart 1 1983 Rumble Fish 1 1984 The Cotton Club 2 2 1 2 1986 Peggy Sue Got Married 3 2 1988 3 1 1 1 1 1990 The Godfather Part III 7 7 1992 Bram Stoker's Dracula 4 3 4 1997 The Rainmaker 1
Directed Oscar Performances
Under Coppola's direction, these actors have received Academy Award nominations (and wins) for their performances in their respective roles.
1973 Marlon Brando The Godfather 1975 Al Pacino The Godfather Part II 1987 Kathleen Turner Peggy Sue Got Married 1973 James Caan The Godfather Robert Duvall Al Pacino 1975 Robert De Niro The Godfather Part II Michael V. Gazzo Lee Strasberg 1980 Robert Duvall Apocalypse Now 1989 Martin Landau 1991 Andy García The Godfather Part III 1967 Geraldine Page You're a Big Boy Now 1975 Talia Shire The Godfather Part II
Bibliography
See also
Notes
Works cited
(1997). 9780571190119, Faber and Faber Limited. ISBN 9780571190119
External links
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