Sofia Coppola On Real Reasons She Passed On Directing ‘Twilight: Breaking Dawn’ & Live-Action Version Of ‘The Little Mermaid’

While promoting her new film Priscilla, director Sofia Coppola is opening up about the movies she passed on in the past which includes the final Twilight film and a live-action version of The Little Mermaid.

Coppola was in talks to helm the final film in the Twilight saga which the studio split into two parts. The director thought the story was “too weird” and opted out after one single meeting.

“We had one meeting, and it never went anywhere,” Coppola said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I thought the whole imprinting-werewolf thing was weird. The baby. Too weird! But part of the earlier ‘Twilight’ could be done in an interesting way. I thought it’d be fun to do a teen-vampire romance, but the last one gets really far out.”

Bill Condon would end up taking up director duties for Breaking Dawn which was released in 2011 and 2012.

Back in 2014, Coppola developed a live-action version of The Little Mermaid with Universal Pictures and Working Title, a completely different take than the Disney version. However, things didn’t work out after a studio executive asked how her film would appeal to older men.

“Yes, there was [a breaking point]. 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,” Coppola said. “I just was not in my element. 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.”