Over the last several years, there have been successful biopics made about several legendary singers like Elvis Presley, Freddie Mercury, and Elton John. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense that Hollywood is set to make more music biopics about major pop stars in the years to come.
In recent months, there were headlines revealing that Michael Jackson's nephew is set to play the king of pop in an upcoming biopic. On top of that, it was announced that a Madonna biopic was in the works until it was reported that the plans for the film were abandoned.
Considering how excited the Hollywood studios clearly are about music biopics, it seemed puzzling that the movie about Madonna seemed to be going away. Then, it was claimed that the production of the film about Madonna had been sabotaged.
Why Production Of Madonna's Biopic Was Abandoned
In the history of the music business, there has never been anyone quite like Madonna. A true pop superstar, Madonna released an extremely long list of hit songs. On top of that, for many years it seemed like Madonna had the Midas touch as she stayed on top by reinventing herself over and over again.
Thanks to Madonna's superstar status, she also had memorable interactions with many major celebrities like David Letterman, Britney Spears, Dennis Rodman, and many more. All things considered, based on how mind-blowing Madonna's life has been, making a biopic about her seemed like a total no-brainer.
In 2020, the world got the news that seemed a long time coming, Universal Pictures was preparing a Madonna biopic. Then in January 2023, fans were shocked to learn that plans to make the movie about Madonna had been canceled.
After that news broke, The U.S. Sun published an article that claimed to reveal the reasons why Universal Pictures had canceled the project. According to that report, there were two main reasons why the Madonna biopic wasn't going to make its way onto the big screen.
First off, the report claimed that Madonna wanted "near-total" control over how the biopic about her was produced. In theory, the Madonna biopic could have been a success with the pop star taking the reins but that also could have made the project seem like a glorified vanity project.
Secondly, The U.S. Sun reported Universal Pictures decided to give up on the project because of the singer's behavior on social media.
As The U.S. Sun's source explained, "Madonna did herself no favors by acting weird on social media during this entire process. She signed a contract to make this film and that should have been the signal to her to stop the circus antics, stop chasing likes, and just buckle down and get this movie into shape."
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The U.S. Sun's source continued "The studio bosses were watching what Madonna posted over these months where she was supposed to be writing and were left scratching their heads."
Just before The U.S. Sun published their report, someone reached out to the person behind the popular celebrity gossip Instagram account Deuxmoi. That anonymous submission agreed with part of what The U.S. Sun claimed. "Madonna wants to sanitize the story.”
The submitter continued, “Madonna needs to fire some of the chickens in her own coop. I’ve never known a celebrity to have so many saboteurs in their own crew. She keeps a young crew mainly comprising of people who just want proximity to her fame and have no [actual] weight behind their creative input. Aspiring hip-hop artists, rappers, bulls**t fashion designers… nobody with any care/stake in Madonna’s s**t doing well.”
What made that submission different is it went on to elaborate on the situation. According to wherever was behind the submission, Madonna's problem was the people she surrounds herself with.
The source went on to explain that the problem is the saboteurs in Madonna's life didn't care about her enough to tell the pop singer what she needed to hear about the biopic.
“She has no one in her team [that] will sit her down and say, ‘Hey, biopics usually suck’, or ‘Hey, maybe you should include the bad along with the good so this isn’t just an unbelievably polished story about your career’.”
Finally, the person who wrote to Deuxmoi explained why they were happy on some level that the Madonna biopic had been canceled.
“I’m half glad it’s canceled and half devastated because the amount of work these dancers put in was next level. I spent over 16 weeks of my life helping actors and dancers in what can only be described as the most unnecessarily intense and perfectionist boot camp style audition process I have ever known in my 12 years as a professional dancer.”
Is The Madonna Biopic Actually Going To Happen?
Over the last several years, Madonna has mostly disappeared from the popular music landscape. As a result, it can be easy at times for people to forget what she accomplished during her incredible career.
One of Madonna's attributes that some people appear to have forgotten is how many times she has proven to be a survivor. After all, at the height of Madonna's career, she was wrapped up in more controversies than most of her peers combined, and it didn't slow her down a bit.
Given Madonna's track record, people should know by now that they should never count her out. Despite that, when it was reported that plans for the Madonna biopic had been abandoned, most observers seemed to assume that was the end of the story.
In May 2023, news broke that gave a lot of observers hope that that reports about Madonna's biopic being abandoned were exaggerated.
When plans for the Madonna biopic were still in the works, it was announced that Julia Garner from Ozark had been cast as the queen of pop. As a result, when Garner was interviewed by Entertainment Tonight in March 2023, she was asked about the project's cancelation and if it was possible that it could be revived.
"I don't want to tell too much. I want to keep things... yeah, fingers crossed,"
Based on Garner's comments, when Madonna posted photos of herself with Garner on Instagram in May, many observers assumed that meant the plans for the biopic were back on. On top of that, Madonna captioned one of the photos, "B*tch we're Madonna". Of course, it is far from confirmed that the biopic is happening but Madonna posting those photos was a fascinating turn of events.
