Sofia Coppola is the queen of coming-of-age tales. From the dreamy dissection of girlhood in The Virgin Suicides to the rise and fall of kleptomaniac young socialites in The Bling Ring, the filmmaker is in her element when portraying the disillusionment of maturing.
So, it was only natural when Coppola's family production company American Zoetrope bought the rights to Alysia Abbott's Fairyland, a personal memoir about growing up with alongside a father with AIDS, soon after its publication in 2013.
"I love the book Fairyland; it's a sweet and unique love story of a girl and her dad, both growing up together in 1970s San Francisco," Coppola said at the time. "I think it will make an engaging and touching movie on a subject I've never seen before."
Coppola, who started writing a script almost immediately after obtaining the rights, eventually scrapped the initial draft in favor of co-writing with Andrew Durham.
Durham soon assumed the role of Fairyland's sole writer and director; Coppola remains on the film as producer alongside brother Roman.
Fairyland Author is Confident in Duo's Ability to Bring Her Story to the Big Screen
In a 2014 interview, Fairyland author Alysia Abbott shared that she was confident in Coppola and Durham's ability to transform her touching memoir for the big screen.
"Ultimately what was important to me was that the person adapting my work was true to the spirit of the work," Abbott told The Rumpus, noting that the duo seemed like "a really good match."
She continued, "I wanted someone who would not see it as just a wild Bohemian kind of story but as a relationship between a daughter and father. In [Coppola]'s movies she is very sensitive to the experience of young women, and this is a story of a young woman and her relationship with her father. This is not a Harvey Milk story. It is not about the political activity within the gay liberation movement in San Francisco. Sofia has a lot of artistic integrity."
As for Durham, Abbott believes his deeply personal ties to the story will be monumental in adapting Fairyland. "He is a gay man who lost his own father to AIDS, so I believe he is going to be sensitive to the film," Abbott said. "He assured me it will not be like Dallas Buyers Club."
Starring CODA's Emilia Jones, Scoot McNairy, Geena Davis, and Cody Fern, there is no word yet on a release date for Fairyland.