AIDS Drama Fairyland To Be Produced By Sofia Coppola
August 24, 2022Oscar winner Sofia Coppola’s next project is an adaptation of the coming-of-age memoir, Fairyland. Set in San Francisco in the midst of the early AIDS crisis, the Lost in translation director is producing the film of Alysia Abbott’s memoir depicting her youth growing up with her bisexual father in the 1970s and 80s.
“I love the book Fairyland; It’s a sweet and unique love story of a girl and her father who grew up together in 1970s San Francisco. I think it’s going to be a compelling and touching film about a subject I’ve never seen before,” said Coppola, after American Zoetrope, her production company, acquired the film rights to the book in 2013.
According to US Today, the film, which will star Emilia Jones as Abbott and Scoot McNairy as her father Steve, was filmed recently but has no release date or distribution yet. Geena Davis, Cody Fern, Adam Lambert and Maria Bakalova also appear in the film.
Coppola wrote an initial draft of the screenplay and later rewrote it with director Andrew Durham. The film is Durham’s directorial debut. “He’s a gay man who lost his own father to AIDS, so I think he’s going to be sensitive about the film,” Abbott said of Durham in a 2014 interview. “He has assured me that it will not be so Dallas Buyers Club.”
Abbott criticized the 2013 film’s portrayal of a straight cis male protagonist who is cashing in on the AIDS crisis. “Sure it showed AIDS at that time, but I felt like it didn’t give perspective to the broader fight and what it meant for so many gay men.”
Abbott moved to San Francisco with her father in the early 1970s after the death of her mother. He came out as bisexual when Abbott was two and died of AIDS-related complications when she was 20.
“I felt like a story like this had never been told – that is, the story of a single gay father raising a daughter in San Francisco in the ’70s and ’80s,” Abbott said of her memoir. “I really felt like it had some cultural significance – what [it] what it was like to have a gay parent during that time and what it was like to lose a parent to AIDS during that time.
Read related myGwork articles here:
My Policeman: Prime Video Releases First Trailer For Gay Harry Styles Drama
Trailer released for gay conversion drama ‘Boy Erased’
Colin Firth And Stanley Tucci To Play Gay Couple In Upcoming Movie
Keep up to date with the latest myGnews