The Beguiled (2017 film) for a biracial character from the novel, she cast white actress Kirsten Dunst. "The Guardian" said Coppola was criticized for engaging in whitewashing, to which the director said she made the changes so as "not [to] brush over such an important topic in a light way," and that "[y]oung girls watch my films and this was not the depiction of an African American character I would want to show them." The Beguiled (2017 film) The Beguiled is a 2017 American drama film written and directed by Sofia Coppola, based on the novel of the same name (originally published as "A
Francis Ford Coppola 1998, when the jurors in the resultant court case awarded Coppola $20 million as compensation for losing the "Pinocchio" film project. However, they also awarded him a further $60 million in punitive damages on top, stemming from his charges that Warner Bros. sabotaged his intended version. This is the largest civil financial verdict ever against a Hollywood studio. During the filming of "Contact" on December 28, 1996, Coppola filed a lawsuit against Carl Sagan and Warner Bros. Sagan had died a week earlier and Coppola claimed that Sagan's novel "Contact" was based on a story the pair had developed for