Disney made a live-action Little Mermaid film with Halle Bailey this year. However, Sofia Coppola nearly made one herself years ago.
“Not in my element”
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Coppola discussed a wide range of topics. She was approached to direct Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2, however, she deemed the project “too weird.” Another franchise tentpole she was approached for was a live-action Little Mermaid. This project was closer to happening, it seems.
The project fell apart, though. Rolling Stone asked if there was an identifiable “breaking point” with the Little Mermaid film. “Yes, there was,” she said. “I was in a boardroom and some development guy said, ‘What's gonna get the 35-year-old man in the audience?' And I just didn't know what to say.
“I just was not in my element,” she confessed. “I feel like I was naive, and then I felt a lot like the character in the story, trying to do something out of my element, and it was a funny parallel of the story for me.”
These kinds of miscommunications happen often to Coppola, she said. “It happens a lot because usually the people financing things are straight men,” she revealed. “So it's not the same point of view, but you're trying to explain, like, ‘People, not everyone's gonna be into what you're into,' but I just wanted to make things that appeal to me and express that.”
Sofia Coppola has always done her own thing. She's directed very intimate films like Lost in Translation and On the Rocks. Her next feature film is Priscilla, an adaptation of Priscilla Presley's autobiography, Elvis and Me. It's unclear if a Little Mermaid-like film will ever be in the cards for the filmmaker.
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