In the gilded, echoing halls of the Palace of Versailles, the young director Sofia Coppola once did the unthinkable, securing the first-ever film production permit for the historic site. Two decades later, that daring 2006 project—the Oscar-winning Marie Antoinette—is being pulled back into the light, not through the lens of a historical epic, but through the intimate, observational gaze of the director’s late mother, Eleanor Coppola. Global distributor Mubi has officially acquired worldwide rights to Making Marie Antoinette, a documentary feature culled from over 80 hours of previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage, according to Variety.
The project serves as a posthumous fulfillment of a promise between mother and daughter. The Hollywood Reporter notes that Eleanor Coppola, who passed away on April 12, 2024, at age 87, began the arduous process of reviewing the 2005 set footage with Sofia during the global lockdown. The resulting film, edited by Aaron Matthews with guidance from Eleanor’s friends Davia Nelson and Liz Bird, offers a dual narrative: a technical look at the craftsmanship behind Milena Canonero’s Academy Award-winning costumes and a raw, journal-driven exploration of a mother watching her daughter command a massive production.
Beyond the polished aesthetic of the original film—which starred Kirsten Dunst as the doomed queen and Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI—this documentary taps into a lineage of cinematic chronicling. Deadline highlights that Eleanor was already a proven master of the form, having famously documented the chaotic production of her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now in the 1991 classic Hearts of Darkness. This new project, however, trades the jungle of the Philippines for the court of Versailles, with Oscar-nominated actress Diane Lane lending her voice to read Eleanor’s personal journals, bridging the gap between the filmmaker’s professional eye and maternal heart.
The acquisition marks a deepening of the relationship between Mubi and the Coppola family, following the distributor's previous handling of the Elvis-era biopic Priscilla. Mubi’s founder and CEO Efe Cakarel underscored the cultural weight of the acquisition, calling Sofia Coppola one of the "defining filmmakers of her generation." The documentary, financed by Our Films, Mediawan Rights, and Entourage Pictures, arrives as a celebration of the original film's 20th anniversary. While the cast list for the original feature was star-studded—including Judy Davis, Rose Byrne, and the film debut of Jamie Dornan—the new documentary focuses squarely on the legacy of the women behind the camera.
For the industry, this moment underscores the growing value of the "making-of" genre when it transcends mere marketing to become a historical artifact in its own right. By framing the production of a stylized period piece as a personal mother-daughter journey, the film provides a rare, unvarnished look at the pressures of early-2000s auteur filmmaking. As the industry awaits official release dates, Mubi has promised to announce further details in the near future, setting the stage for audiences to re-examine a polarizing, influential work of art through the eyes of the woman who knew its creator best.
