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.

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."

In her own words, Coppola's live-action Little Mermaid "wasn’t the Disney version." Instead, it was a closer adaptation of Andersen's original fairy tale in the sense that it was "much darker." Coppola also intended to film The Little Mermaid underwater, similar to what James Cameron later achieved with Avatar: The Way of Water. However, shooting underwater presents difficult technical challenges and is very costly. Coppola clashed with Universal over the budget required to shoot underwater, which is another reason why she left the project.

Source: Press Release