Director Sofia Coppola.
Credit: Reuters File Photo
Los Angeles: Filmmaker Sofia Coppola has opened up on why Apple axed her limited series adaptation of Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country.
The director, known for independent and celebrated movies like Lost in Translation, The Bling Ring and Priscilla, said the executives did not get the unlikable heroine at the centre of the story.
"Apple just pulled out. They pulled our funding,” Coppola said in a New Yorker interview. "It’s a real drag. I thought they had endless resources. [But] they didn’t get the character of Undine,” Coppola said.
“She’s so ‘unlikable.’ But so is Tony Soprano!” she argued.
About parting ways with the streamer, Coppola said, "It was like a relationship that you know you probably should’ve gotten out of a while ago.”
Wharton's 1913 novel follows Undine Spragg, a Midwestern on a desperate quest to infiltrate Gilded Age Manhattan society. The series was to be for five episodes with a reported budget of $200 million.
Apple may have pulled the plug on Coppola's series adaptation but they went ahead with adapting Wharton's unfinished novel The Buccaneers, which is all set to get a second season.