Madonna has revealed that her planned biopic has been canceled due to a “conflict” with Universal Studios over budget.
“I was supposed to make a movie about my life. I spent two years writing the script and two years at Universal Studios working with line producers on budgeting and casting,” she told Interview magazine editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg in a cover story published Monday.
Madonna explained that she needed a “huge budget” to portray her “extraordinary life” in the film, but Universal “didn’t understand” that and wouldn’t spend more money on it.
But the 67-year-old, who directed the film and was set to be played by “Ozark” star Julia Garner, said she found a way to make the biopic in Serbia on a lower budget, but that didn’t sit well with Universal.
“Maybe they didn’t believe me,” she said. “Their first reaction was, ‘I don’t think you’re going to be in Serbia for more than four days.’ So I said, ‘Have you read the script?’ My whole life has been about survival. I’m not going there on vacation. ”
The Material Girl singer said she was “at a loss” when plans for a biopic fell through, but there was a glimmer of hope when Netflix approached her about making a limited series based on her life.
Unfortunately, Madonna couldn’t use the script she wrote for Universal “unless I bought it from Universal at a usurper’s price.”
“That’s just the way it is,” she said. “I started trying to understand how series production works. It’s a very, very different process. You have to meet with a lot of writers and find the right showrunner. But I just couldn’t find it.”
Madonna said another eight or nine months passed before plans for the Netflix series fell apart, at which point she decided to focus on her music career.
“I thought, ‘I’m glad I have another job, because I have to work and I have to create. I have to fulfill my mission on this earth,'” she said.
Page Six has reached out to Universal for comment.
Garner, 32, was cast as the lead in the Madonna biopic in 2022 after a grueling song-and-dance boot camp battle with other actresses.
Two years later, Madonna spoke out against Hollywood producers who allegedly told her to scale back projects, declaring that she had no intention of making herself “smaller.”
After the film was canceled, a friend of Madonna’s told Page Six that she had wanted a “niftier” script, but Universal preferred a script that was “poppier and lighter”, leading to a “stalemate”.
The source insists a biopic will be made “at some point,” but added: “We are aware that we may have to recast if we don’t have all the actors.”
In April, Madonna and Garner filmed a scene on Season 2 of Apple TV’s “The Studio” teasing the canceled biopic. They were also spotted recreating their 1984 ‘Like a Virgin’ music video in a gondola in Venice.
For now, Madonna is focusing on her 15th studio album, Confessions II, which will be released on July 3rd. Her last album, Madame X, was released seven years ago.
In an article for Interview magazine, Madonna said that she made this album at a time when she was going through a lot in her personal life, including the deaths of her brother Christopher Ciccone and her stepmother Joan Ciccone, whom she said she had “a very traumatic relationship with throughout my childhood.”
Madonna said, “We went back and forth a few times and said, ‘Okay, this is the right one. This feels good.’ So unless Netflix calls me tomorrow with my favorite author, I’m going to start down this path.”
“Of course, halfway through the process, more than 75 percent of the way through, I found a writer and I thought, ‘There’s no going back. I have to go a little further,'” she added. “So that’s what I did.”
Madonna also said that she feels that the tragic life events that inspired the album were like a discarded movie script.
“It starts with death and ends with death, but there’s all the life in between,” she said.
“It’s obviously a paradoxical theme, but death is part of life. I felt like I had a lot to get off my chest.”
