Madonna's Previously Shelved Biopic Has Been Revived—and It Even Has a Title

Over a year and a half after the project was put on ice, a Madonna biopic is back in the works, according to The Hollywood Reporter. After news broke in January 2023 that a film about the singer’s life and her decades-long career wasn’t moving forward, the tide seems to have turned, and Madonna herself seems to have confirmed it.

In a new post on Instagram, “Madonna shared a compilation of photos of herself working on a typewriter, with an array of papers around her,” The Hollywood Reporter writes. In one photo, the movie’s potential title, Who’s That Girl, is seen on the first page of what looks like a script; “Who’s That Girl” is a nod to both her 1987 song and film of the same name. The script was previously called “M Untitled,” but a line was drawn across that working title and replaced with “Who’s That Girl.”

“I Need A-lot of Bandz to make this…..OKAY,” she captioned the post, adding "(Story of my life)." The post also included another glimpse at the script that read “rewrites by Madonna and ECW.” ECW, according to The Hollywood Reporter, seemingly refers to writer Erin Cressida Wilson, who wrote Secretary and was brought onto the project after Diablo Cody had to step away from it. 

Madonna was initially set to direct the biopic, with Julia Garner set to star as the Material Girl herself. Good news—Entertainment Weekly reports that Garner is reportedly still in to play the Queen of Pop “after proving to be a standout in a singing and dancing bootcamp,” Deadline reports. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a lengthy audition process to play Madonna saw many stars—including Florence Pugh, Odessa Young, and Alexa Demie—vying for the starring role, with hopefuls taking part in an “intense and sometimes 11-hour choreography sessions with Madonna’s choreographer and the artist herself,” The Hollywood Reporter writes.

After the project was shut down 18 months ago, a source told the outlet that “development was always a struggle for the movie, and that the many drafts of the scripts were always over 180 pages,” the publication writes. “There were conversations about splitting the movie in two or making it a miniseries, but that never panned out.”

According to the source at the time (and quite understandably, at that), “You have 40 years of success, and it’s very hard to put that into one movie,” they said of Madonna, who rose to fame in the early 1980s.

But now, it looks like the powers that be are going to try. Is it too early to pre-order tickets? Maybe?