Madonna has confirmed publicly for the first time that a budget dispute with Universal Pictures killed her self-directed biopic, ending a five-year development saga that consumed four years of her creative life and left a finished screenplay in legal limbo.
Speaking to Interview magazine, the pop star said she spent two years writing the script and another two years at Universal working through line-by-line budget and casting sessions before the relationship collapsed. “We had a falling out, me and Universal, regarding budget because I needed — I’ve had an extraordinary life. I’ve had a huge life, so I needed a big budget,” she said. When the figures proved too high, Madonna proposed an alternative: shoot the film in Serbia at a reduced cost. Universal balked. “One of their first reactions was, ‘We don’t believe you’d stay in Serbia more than four days,'” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Did you read the script? My whole life has been survival. I’m not going there for a holiday.'”
Universal won a competitive multi-studio auction in 2021 to produce the film, which was tentatively titled Who’s That Girl — a nod to her 1987 comedy and its accompanying No. 1 single. The project cycled through multiple writers, including Diablo Cody and Erin Cressida Wilson, before Madonna took sole authorship of the screenplay. Ozark Emmy winner Julia Garner was cast in the title role following a widely publicized 2022 audition process.
The fallout with Universal set off a second, equally frustrating chapter. Netflix approached Madonna to develop a limited series about her life, but a contractual trap stopped her cold: Universal owned the script she had written, and buying it back carried what she described as an “extortionist’s price.” She had to start from scratch. The Netflix project also stalled after months of searching for a showrunner she could work with. A 2025 report linked producer Shawn Levy to that series effort, though no deal solidified.
The biopic’s collapse has found an unlikely afterlife on television. Both Madonna and Garner filmed scenes for The Studio Season 2 at Apple, with one storyline depicting a fictional Madonna biopic starring Garner premiering at the Venice Film Festival — a meta echo of the project that never was. Meanwhile, Madonna, who is preparing a new album titled Confessions II, suggested in the interview she has accepted the project’s fate and moved on.
