AceShowbiz - Filmmaker Paul Verhoeven was forced to stall the release of his new lesbian nun drama "Benedetta" due to a hip operation that went wrong.

The "Basic Instinct" director is premiering his controversial movie at the Cannes Film Festival in France after initially planning to drop the project at last year's (2020) event.

His hip issues prompted him to pull the film's release and then the COVID pandemic shut down Cannes and the rest of the world.

Speaking to Deadline at the festival, the Dutch moviemaker says, "I had a hip operation that went a bit wrong, and that caused a delay."

"The film was supposed to be in Cannes last year, but it was because of this hip operation that I couldn't come over to France to finish the movie in time for the festival, and then... France was locked down. So, it was the hip operation and then the coronavirus lockdown [that caused the delay]."

Paul's new film is based on the 1986 book "Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy".

"I would probably not be shocked by anything like that, I just read it and thought it would be an interesting movie, because so much has happened between 1623 and now," he tells the outlet. "At that time, the idea of a woman being attracted to another woman was something people couldn't understand would be possible..."

"There are notes in the archives of Florence that describe the trial of the older nun, and there is really nothing else available in archives anywhere in the world. Judith C. Brown, who wrote the book, found them by coincidence when she was in Florence looking for other stuff for her courses. She's a professor. I thought that recreating those times, where lesbianism didn't even exist as a word, and where a woman would be burned if she had a sexual relation with another woman, would be interesting."