The 80s pop icon was once developing a biopic that she would also write and direct. Although it was eventually scrapped, she now announces that she’s back at it.
Music icon Madonna is no stranger to the film side of entertainment. The singer would crossover into movies on many occasions, including starring in a variety of projects like Body of Evidence, A League of Their Own and Dick Tracy. For a time, she would even be married to director Guy Ritchie, who she made a film with called Swept Away. In the past few years, Madonna had been reportedly developing a biopic about herself in which she would be in the rare position to both write and direct. Early last year, the project would not come together and she scrapped the project just ahead of her world tour.
Deadline is now reporting that the 80s pop icon teased on her Instagram that the project is once again in development. Madonna posted a slideshow that featured a series of pictures of her working on a typewriter and her table is littered with screenplay pages. The caption to her post read, “I Need A-lot of Bandz to make this………..OKAY. (Story of my life).” Additionally, in one of the pictures from the video that Madonna teased, you can see a line drawn across the title M Untitled. The new title of the biopic is now reportedly Who’s That Girl, which is a nod to Madonna’s 1987 film and song of the same name.
On her early attempt to develop the film, Madonna first tackled the script with Juno and Jennifer’s Body scribe Diablo Cody, who later exited the project, and again with Erin Cressida Wilson (The Girl on the Train). In Madonna’s Instagram post, the script is noted as being “Rewritten by Madonna and ECW.” There have been previous attempts at telling the story of Madonna’s rise to fame, but she’s never been happy with the scripts she’s been sent. “I read that Universal was doing a script,” Madonna told Jimmy Fallon in 2021. “Like they sent me the script because they wanted my blessing, and I read it. It was the most hideous, superficial crap I’ve ever read.” The artist added that “the reason I’m doing it is because a bunch of people have tried to write movies about me, but they’re always men.”
Julia Garner, best known for her award-winning performance in Netflix’s Ozark, was said to be the frontrunner to play Madonna in the biopic. Julia Garner was one of several stars who participated in a months-long audition process to play Madonna. Garner, along with Florence Pugh, Odessa Young, and Alexa Demis, took choreography lessons with Madonna’s choreographer, as well as singing and reading sessions with Madonna herself.