Photography Mark Borthwick

Sofia Coppola is set to adapt an Edith Wharton novel for TV

The adaptation of The Custom of the Country will be the director’s first major episodic project

With her most recent film, On The Rocks, set to debut later this year, Sofia Coppola has revealed that she will also be adapting The Custom of the Country, by the American novelist (and first female Pulitzer Prize winner) Edith Wharton.

The Lost in Translation director will write and direct the adaptation as a “potential” limited series for Apple TV, Variety reports, which would make it the director’s first full-length project for television. As of yet, there are no details about potential casting or production.

First published in 1913, Wharton’s The Custom of the Country centres around Undine Spragg, a young Midwestern girl who attempts to ascend through the ranks of New York City society.

In a statement, Coppola says: “Undine Spragg is my favorite literary anti-heroine and I’m excited to bring her to the screen for the first time.”

On The Rocks, Coppola’s seventh feature film, is her first since 2017’s The Beguiled, for which she became the second ever woman to win the award for Best Director at Cannes. It will tell the story of “a young mother (Rashida Jones) who reconnects with her larger-than-life playboy father (Bill Murray) on an adventure through New York”.

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