Sofia Coppola says she has to fight for a “small fraction” of the huge budget male directors get

Sofia Coppola is getting candid about making low-budget movies because, as a director, she doesn’t tend to get the huge budgets that her male counterparts get.

In a conversation with BBC News, he priscilla director opened on how she had to be creative with the Priscilla Presley biopic, based on the biography Elvis and medue to its relatively low budget of $20 million.

“I just see all these men getting hundreds of millions of dollars, and then I’m fighting for a tiny fraction of that,” he said. “I think it’s a carryover from the way the culture of that business is. It’s frustrating, but I’m always fighting for it and I’m happy to be able to make my films independently and find people who believe in them.”

As frustrating as it can be, the filmmaker admitted that she has one advantage: She doesn’t have to deal with a lot of feedback from her superiors because they haven’t invested as much in her projects.

“There’s a challenge and a freedom in doing small things because if you have a big budget, you have a lot of input from studio executives, and I could never make a movie like that,” he continued. “So I have that freedom, and then you have to be very crafty, and it was very difficult, but I had the best team.”

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

Another problem they faced was the inability to use Elvis Presley’s music in the project. He Marie Antoinette The director originally wanted to own three of the King of Rock and Roll’s songs, but knew there was a chance she wouldn’t be able to get the rights. So, she turned to the tune of another legendary musician.

“For me, it’s really important to have Dolly Parton at the end, to have a woman’s voice at the end,” Coppola explained of the film set to Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”

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