News feed
Sofia Coppola, centre, on the set of her latest film The Beguiled
Credit: The Beguiled/Instagram
Sofia Coppola’s haunting, ill-fated live action Disney adaptation of The Little Mermaid will always remain just that: a spectre of cinema left to linger in limbo for the remainder of time, doomed to screen in the private cinemas of our imaginations, never to be realised.
Until recently, little has been revealed as to why the auteur withdrew from the production, which is still in the works at Universal, aside from the oft-cited “creative differences”. However, at a recent event in at New York City’s Film Society of Lincoln Centre, the filmmaker elucidated her reasons for leaving the production, which sounds as though it would’ve been less like the recent Beauty and The Beast remake and something more in keeping with the contemporary predilection for ‘darker’ remakes of beloved classics.
“It wasn’t the Disney version, it was actually the original fairy tale, which is much darker,” Coppola said, referring to the Hans Christian Andersen tale wherein his protagonist, having failed to both win the love of the prince and murder him in exchange for her life, dissolves into foam. “I thought it would be fun to do a fairy tale, I’ve always loved fairy tales, so I was curious about doing that.
“It became too big of a scale,” Coppola continued, discussing the struggle between commercial and artistic demands. “I wanted to shoot it really underwater, which would have been a nightmare. But underwater photography is so beautiful. We even did some tests. It was not very realistic, that approach. But it was interesting to think about.”
Coppola’s latest film, The Beguiled, is garnering a great deal of critical acclaim for the filmmaker. Coppola made cinema history after she became the second woman in the history of the Cannes Film Festival to win best director for the remake of a Southern gothic novel-turned-film. The Beguiled, which opens in Australian cinemas later this year, stars Colin Farrell alongside Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning as a wounded Civil War soldier and the vengeful, lustful occupants of a boarding school respectively.
Tile and cover image: Mike Marsland/Mike Marsland/WireImage)
