Madonna’s Biopic Fell Through Because It Needed a “Big Budget” for Her “Huge Life”

In a new interview with Interview, Madonna opened up about the drama surrounding her now-canceled biopic: Originally, Madonna was going to direct the movie herself, with Julia Garner starring as her younger self. However, she and Universal Studios had a “falling out” (her words) over money. “I’ve had an extraordinary life. I’ve had a huge life, so I needed a big budget,” she told interviewer Mel Ottenberg.

She also revealed that even after she found a way to reduce costs by filming in Serbia, they doubted she’d be able to make the project work. “Maybe they just didn’t believe in me. One of their first reactions was, ‘We don’t believe you’d stay in Serbia more than four days.’ And I said, ‘Did you read the script?’ My whole life has been survival. I’m not going there for a holiday.”

Later, when approached by Netflix with the idea of making a series version of her life story, Madonna said that “that was a whole other long process, because I couldn’t use the script I had with Universal unless I bought it from them for an extortionist’s price, even though I wrote it… That’s just the way it goes.”

Daunted by the idea of writing a series from scratch — “it’s a very, very different process. You have to meet a lot of writers and find the right showrunner, and I couldn’t find one” — Madonna instead turned to her “other” job to fulfill her creativity, leading to the upcoming album Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II. Meanwhile, her biopic lives on in fiction: The Studio Season 2 (set in its own reality) will feature a two-part episode in which the completed film screens at the Venice Film Festival. Madonna plays herself.