Sofia Coppola fights for ‘a fraction’ of male directors’ budgets – The Hollywood Reporter

Sofia Coppola

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Sofia Coppola has become vocal about making films on low budgets because, as a director, she doesn’t tend to get the huge budgets that her male counterparts do.

In conversation with bbc news, the Priscilla The director spoke about how she created the Priscilla Presley biopic, based on the autobiography Facebook and meDue to its relatively low budget of $20 million.

“I see all these guys getting hundreds of millions of dollars, and then I fight for a little piece of that,” she said. “I think that’s just a remnant of the culture of this business. It’s frustrating, but I always struggle to get by, and I’m happy to be able to produce my films independently and find people who believe in them.”

Despite how frustrating it can be, the director admitted that she has a silver lining: she doesn’t have to deal with as much backlash from higher-ups because they don’t invest much in her projects.

“There’s a challenge and freedom in keeping things small, because if you have a big budget, you’re going to have a lot of input from studio executives, and I would never be able to make a movie like this,” she continued. “So, I have that freedom, and then you have to be really skilled, and it was really tough, but I had the best team.”

She and her team reused a lot of sets and were able to create many of the costumes, which Coppola attributes to her creative department heads who took what they could get and ran with it. Due to its financial constraints Priscilla It was shot in 30 days and on digital, instead of on film the director wanted, because they had to move so quickly.

Another problem they faced was not being able to use Elvis Presley’s music in the project. the Marie Antoinette’ name The director originally wanted three of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s songs, but knew there was a possibility she wouldn’t be able to get the rights. So, I turned to another legendary musical tune instead.

“For me, it’s really important for it to be Dolly Parton at the end, and for there to be a female voice at the end,” Coppola explained of the film, which is set to Parton’s song “I Will Always Love You.”

Priscilla It stars Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi and is now available to stream on Prime Video.