Madonna teased that she is reviving her once-dead biopic project.
“I Need A-lot of Bandz to make this………..OKAY 🍸💵🤑. (Story of my life),” the pop star, 65, wrote via Instagram on Tuesday, July 16, alongside several pictures of herself making edits to a script using a typewriter. She wore glasses, a black vest over a striped button-down and jeans for the photo shoot.
In one of the photos, the title M Untitled is crossed out, with a new title, Who’s That Girl, typed out next to it. The first page of the script also notes that “rewrites by Madonna and ECW” are in progress. ECW seemingly refers to Erin Cressida Wilson, who was set to cowrite the film with Madonna until production was postponed in January 2023.
Madonna’s Instagram post seems to suggest that work on the project has resumed. Entertainment Weekly reported on Tuesday that Julia Garner is still set to star as the “Like a Prayer” singer.
Madonna previously shed light on why she wanted to write and direct a film about herself.
“The reason I’m doing it is because a bunch of people have tried to write movies about me, but they’re always men,” she said during an October 2021 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “I read that Universal was doing a script. 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.”
Madonna then claimed that the film was set to be directed by a man with “no understanding of women,” which made her question his interest in her story.
“I’m not even gonna say his name, but he’s a total misogynist [and he] was directing,” she said. “Why would these people make a movie about my life? There’s nothing true in the script. … No appreciation for women, no respect for women.”
Madonna’s update about the Who’s That Girl biopic comes two months after she concluded her Celebration Tour, which consisted of 81 shows on three different continents. Originally set to kick off in July 2023, the tour was postponed to that October after Madonna developed a bacterial infection, which led to a multiple-day stint at an intensive care unit.
Madonna reflected on the “near-death experience” during a March performance at The Kia Forum in Inglewood, California.
“It was pretty scary. Obviously, I didn’t know for four days, because I was in an induced coma,” she told the crowd. “But when I woke up, the first word I said was ‘No.’ Anyway, that’s what my assistant tells me. I’m pretty sure that God was saying to me, ‘Do you wanna come with us? You wanna come with me? You wanna go this way?’ And I said, ‘No. No. No!’”
