Page "Francis Ford Coppola" Paragraph 47

Coppola co-produced George Lucas ’ s first film, THX 1138, in 1971.

Shortly after completion of production Lucas and Coppola brought the finished film to Warner Bros., along with several other scripts for potential projects at American Zoetrope.

However, studio executives strongly disliked all the scripts including THX.

Warner demanded that Coppola repay the $ 300, 000 they had loaned him for the Zoetrope studio, and insisted on cutting five minutes from the film.

The debt nearly closed Zoetrope, and forced Coppola to ( reluctantly ) focus on The Godfather.

In 1974, he wrote the screenplay for The Great Gatsby, and in 1979, he was executive producer for The Black Stallion.