Sofia Coppola will adapt 1913 novel for first TV project

Proving once again that TV is the medium continuing to pull in top talent in Hollywood, Oscar-winning writer and director Sofia Coppola is making the move to the small screen with her first television series. Coppola, who won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award after her second-ever cinematic outing, 2003's Lost In Translation, will be adapting a classic 1913 novel that occupies a spot close to her heart.American novelist Edith Wharton wrote The Custom of The Country about a newly-wealthy young Midwestern American woman and her attempts to make a mark on New York’s high society through a strategic marriage to a poet from a respected (but completely broke) family. Decades of drama ensue. Wharton’s protagonist is a woman Coppola revealed she's admired for some time. “Undine Spragg is my favorite literary anti-heroine,” she told Variety. “And I’m excited to bring her to the screen for the first time.”The material and maker are a fitting match as Coppola is known for intimate narratives featuring female leads, often exploring the tension between the personal and societal pressures. Wharton herself was a fascinating person and the parallels between her life and Coppola’s can’t be overlooked. Both artists descend from wealthy families and their subjects and stories tend to come from circumstances similar to their own. With Coppola, that’s meant visits to the French court in Marie Antoinette, a look inside the striving upper-middle class in Bling Ring and a gothic dive into Civil War-era southern plantation life in The Beguiled. Wharton, who didn’t publish her first novel until she was 40 years old, used her writing to critique the social clashes between the nouveau riche and reigning old money elite.[video_embed id='-1']RELATED: Ansel Elgort embarrassing Nicole Kidman is the cutest thing'[/video_embed]Coppola has tested the TV waters before, directing a holiday special starring her Lost in Translation leading man, Bill Murray, the aptly-titled musical comedy A Very Murray Christmas. The Custom of The Country, however, will be Coppola’s first time with episodic storytelling.Coppola’s TV debut follows that of some of her best-known collaborators including Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies), Kirsten Dunst (Fargo) and Elle Fanning, whose new period comedy The Great premieres later this week. Coppola's latest film, On the Rocks, reunites her with Murray and co-stars Rashida Jones and Jenny Slate and has a 2020 release date but that may have changed due to the ongoing pandemic.[video_embed id='1953268']BEFORE YOU GO: Adele shares rare photo for her birthday[/video_embed]