Lisa Marie Presley complained to Sofia Coppola over Priscilla film script - BBC News
Lisa Marie Presley complained that a new film would make Elvis out as "a predator and manipulative".
Lisa Marie read the script several months before she died in January at the age of 54

Lisa Marie Presley complained to director Sofia Coppola that a new film's script made her father Elvis out to be "a predator and manipulative", according to Hollywood outlet Variety.

Lisa Marie wrote to the film-maker to raise concerns four months before her death in January, Variety reported.

The film tells the story of her mother Priscilla, who met Elvis at the age of 14. Priscilla has supported the movie.

He is depicted with "sensitivity and complexity", Coppola told Lisa Marie.

The film, titled Priscilla, is based on Priscilla's 1985 memoir Elvis and Me.

In one email, Lisa Marie reportedly wrote: "My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative.

"As his daughter, I don't read this and see any of my father in this character. I don't read this and see my mother's perspective of my father. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don't understand why?"

Priscilla is credited as an executive producer on the film, but Lisa Marie threatened to speak out publicly against it and her mother's support for it.

"I am worried that my mother isn't seeing the nuance here or realizing the way in which Elvis will be perceived when this movie comes out," she wrote.

"I feel protective over my mother who has spent her whole life elevating my father's legacy. I am worried she doesn't understand the intentions behind this film or the outcome it will have."

Priscilla and Elvis got married in 1967, when she was 21

As well as supplying the source material and being an executive producer, Priscilla has given a number of interviews to support the film.

She told Piers Morgan's TalkTV show on Thursday that it was an accurate depiction of her and her relationship with the King of Rock 'n' Roll.

Coppola, who won an Oscar in 2004 for the screenplay for Lost in Translation, "did some homework", Priscilla said. "She and I, we talked about it."

Referring to the start of their relationship in 1959 when she was just 14 and he was 24 and serving in the US Army in Germany, Priscilla told Morgan it was "a different time".

Elvis was "unique", she said. "I don't know about grooming me. I didn't take it at that. I'd never heard the word. Obviously it's all new now, but he loved to take me to beautiful stores to buy me an outfit. I didn't have any money. He would take me to the movies every night."

Priscilla Presley joined Sofia Coppola at the film's premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September

She said she understood why people today would think it was inappropriate.

"But I was 14 in Germany, and there was always people around," she said. "Our talks were private, but he never ever, ever, ever was aggressive, nor did he ever make love to me [until they got married when she was 21]. I was someone he trusted to talk to and pour his heart out [to]."

Coppola's representative gave Variety the message she sent to Lisa Marie in reply to her emails.

"I hope that when you see the final film you will feel differently, and understand I'm taking great care in honouring your mother, while also presenting your father with sensitivity and complexity," she wrote.

Critics have questioned how modern viewers will feel about watching Priscilla and Elvis's early relationship.

"Even considering the time period, it's a creepy sight for 2023 eyes,"wrote USA Today's Brian Truitt.

"Some audiences no doubt will bristle at a 14-year-old girl in a sexually adjacent situation,"wrote The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney. "But Coppola handles that aspect nonjudgmentally."

Rolling Stone's Marlow Stern said: "Elvis is depicted in the film as being gentlemanly toward his teen paramour, as off-putting as their courtship looks through 21st-Century eyes."

In the New York Times, Ben Kenigsberg saidthe power dynamic is "appalling from a contemporary standpoint".

He added: "Die-hard Elvis fans will no doubt call some of the characterization in Priscilla slander, but part of the achievement here is that Elvis is not simply a monster."

The film was released widely in the US on Friday and stars Cailee Spaeny in the title role, with Jacob Elordi playing Elvis. It will reach cinemas in the UK in January.

It comes a year after the film Elvis, in which Austin Butler played the singer and Tom Hanks was his manager Colonel Tom Parker.

Lisa Marie died at the age of 54 after a cardiac arrest caused by a "small bowel obstruction" that arose following weight-loss surgery she'd had several years earlier.