 Winona Ryder (qv) saw the script when it was originally going to  be made as a TV movie, directed by Michael Apted (qv). She took  the script to Francis Ford Coppola (qv), whom she had not spoken  to since withdrawing from _Godfather: Part III, The (1990)_ (qv) due  to exhaustion six months earlier. Coppola agreed to make the film,  and Apted stayed on as executive producer.