Were Lisa Marie Presley’s emails leaked to ‘prop up’ Sofia Coppola’s Elvis movie?

Insiders close to the Presley family and the Elvis Presley estate are reportedly furious about the leak of the late Lisa Marie Presley’s private emails to Sofia Coppola, in which she asked the director to change how her father would be depicted in her new film, “Priscilla,” saying that the script was “shockingly vengeful and contemptuous” and would strain her already fragile relationship with her mother, Priscilla Presley.

One of the Presley estate insiders, who spoke to Page Six, suggested that the timing of the leak is “deeply suspicious” — just before “Priscilla” opens wide in theaters this weekend. The insider questioned whether the email leak to Variety was done to generate controversy, which would in turn create public interest that could help the film at the box office.

“These emails obviously did not come from Lisa or anyone close to her, nor the Elvis estate,” the insider told Page Six. “By making public a private email conversation between Lisa Marie and Sofia Coppola, it just goes to show the lengths that people will go to to prop up a failing movie,” the insider also said.

In an exclusive report Thursday, Variety said that Lisa Marie Presley expressed shock and horror over how her father would be portrayed in “Priscilla.” Presley conveyed this despair in two emails sent to Coppola in September 2022, four months before she died of cardiac arrest in January at age 54, Variety said.

Coppola’s new film is a biopic of Priscilla Presley and is based on her 1985 memoir, “Elvis and Me.” Variety said it has sparked conversation among critics and audiences for showing how Elvis began dating Priscilla  in 1959 — when Elvis was 24 but Priscilla was only 14. The film stars Jacob Elordi as Elvis and Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla.

“My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative,” Lisa Marie Presley said in one of her emails, Variety reported. “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?”

Coppola had yet to begin filming “Priscilla” when Lisa Marie Presley reached out and bluntly told her that she would speak out against the project and her mother, who is credited as an executive producer and who has helped publicize the film.

“I will be forced to be in a position where I will have to openly say how I feel about the film and go against you, my mother and this film publicly,” Lisa Marie Presley wrote. According to Coppola’s representative, the director responded respectfully to Lisa Marie. She said, “I hope that when you see the final film you will feel differently, and understand I’m taking great care in honoring your mother, while also presenting your father with sensitivity and complexity.”

An insider close to the production told Variety that Coppola’s goal was to tell “a love story,” with the primary drama coming from a teenage girl’s struggles to adapt to life with a global superstar. The source also said that efforts were made to “tone down” some elements of Priscilla’s account of her romance with her future husband, which would have been “shocking” to contemporary audiences, Variety said.

At the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival, 78-year-old Priscilla Presley tried to set the record straight about one aspect of her relationship with Elvis: She said they didn’t sleep together when she met him at age 14, the New York Post reported. In her memoir, Priscilla said she was a virgin until her wedding, which took place in 1967 when she was 21. She also said she divorced Elvis in 1973 when his lifestyle became too difficult for her but she said that she and her ex-husband remained close until his death in 1978.

“Priscilla” garnered mostly positive positive reviews after the Venice Film Festival, including for its two stars. However, fans on social media have said it shows Elvis Presley “grooming” his young girlfriend, Variety said. Rolling Stone also published an interview with Coppola with the headline, “Is Elvis Presley a Monster in ‘Priscilla’? Sofia Coppola Wants You to Judge for Yourself.” Page Six also reported that “Priscilla is projected to earn between $2 and $4 million at the box office this weekend — on a $20 million budget.

In her emails to Coppola, Lisa Marie Presley expressed concern that her mother was being manipulated by the filmmaker after she had “spent her whole life elevating my father’s legacy.” Lisa Marie also said she was worried about how the film’s portrayal of her father — making him looking “really, really bad” — would impact her 15-year-old twin daughters.

“I had to explain that her beloved grandmother is supporting it,” Lisa Marie Presley wrote to Coppola. “These two little girls have been through so much in the past seven years, enduring my divorce and horrific custody battle and then losing their brother.” Lisa Marie Presley was referring to the 2020 suicide of her son 27-year-old son Benjamin Keough.

Lisa Marie Presley also praised the generally uplifting portrait of her father in the 2022 film “Elvis,” which was directed by Baz Luhrmann. She said it was “a break from suffering and a ray of light that hit us last year. It made them so proud and honored to be his granddaughters. … It made us all so proud because it was a true depiction of who he really was.”

Another source close to Lisa Marie Presley said about Coppola’s film: “Can you imagine how hurtful this is for Lisa’s children?” The Elvis Presley estate insider also repeated a point made earlier, questioning the the motivations of the person who leaked the emails: “The release of the emails before the wide release of this movie, which the projections show isn’t doing very well, is surely for publicity. It’s all deeply suspicious.”