Madonna revealed her planned biopic was scrapped because she had a “fall out” with Universal Studios over the budget.
“I was going to make a movie about my life. I worked on my script for two years and spent two years at Universal Studios with the line producers doing budgeting and casting,” she told Interview magazine editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg in a cover story published Monday.
Madonna explained that she “needed a big budget” so the film could depict her “extraordinary life”, but Universal “couldn’t get their heads around it” and wouldn’t cough up more money.
But the 67-year-old – who had to direct the film and be portrayed by “Ozark” star Julia Garner – said she found a way to make the biopic for less money in Serbia – but it didn’t go over so well with Universal.
“Maybe they just didn’t believe me,” she said. “One of their first reactions was: ‘We don’t think you would stay in Serbia more than four days.’ And I said, ‘Have you read the script?’ My whole life has been survival. I don’t go there on vacation.”
The “Material Girl” singer said she was “in limbo” when the biopic plans fell apart, but there was a glimmer of hope when Netflix reached out about make a limited series based on her life.
Unfortunately, Madonna could not use the script she wrote for Universal unless she “bought it from them for a blackmailer’s price.”
“That’s just the way it goes,” she told him. “I started trying to understand how doing a series would work. 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 said it was another eight or nine months before plans for the Netflix series fell apart, after which she decided to focus on her music career instead.
“I thought, ‘Good, I have another job because I have to work, I have to create. I have to do what I was put on this earth to do,” she said.
Page Six has reached out to Universal for comment.
Madonna biopic cast Garner, 32, to star in 2022 after grueling song-and-dance bootcamp battle against other actresses.
Two years later, Madonna spoke out against Hollywood producers who were allegedly asking her to scale back the project, declaring that she would not make herself “lesser”.
After the film was scrapped, a friend of Madonna told Page Six she wanted a “gritter” scriptwhile Universal preferred it to be “pop and light”, leading to a “stalemate”.
The insider claimed to do the biopic “one day,” but she is “aware that she may have to recast if the actors aren’t available.”
In April, Madonna and Garner filmed scenes for Apple TV’s “The Studio” Season 2 that poked fun at the canceled biopic. They were spotted recreating the 1984 “Like a Virgin” music video on a gondola in Venice.
For now, Madonna is focused on her upcoming 15th studio album, “Confessions II,” which will be published on 3 July. Her last album, “Madame X”, was released seven years ago.
In the Interview Magazine story, Madonna said she made the album when she was dealing with a lot in her personal life, including the deaths of her brother, Christopher Ciccone, and her stepmother, Joan Cicconeas Madonna said she “had a very traumatic relationship throughout my childhood.”
“I went back and forth a few times and then I said, ‘OK, that’s right. It feels good. So unless Netflix wants to call me tomorrow with a writer I like, I’m going to start going down this road,” Madonna said.
“Of course, in the middle of the process, more than 75 percent of the way through, we found the writer and I was like, ‘I can’t go back now. I’ve got to move it up a little,'” she added. “So that’s what I did.”
Madonna also said that she feels the tragic life events that inspired her album are like the script for her scrapped movie.
“It begins with death and it ends with death, but there’s all this life in between,” she shared.
“Obviously, paradoxical subjects, but death is a part of life. It just felt like I had a lot to get off my chest.”
