Madonna and Universal suffered a falling out with one another over the budget for her biopic.
In a conversation with Interview magazine published Monday, the pop idol explained that her relationship with Universal hit a rock in the road thanks to disagreements on the budget for her now-shelved biopic. Madonna believed that the life she’d led needed a bigger budget than Universal would agree to.
“I was supposed 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,” Madonna said. “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. You know what I mean?”
She dove deeper into the issue, saying that Universal struggled with the rising price tag and then when the pop star pitched shooting things in Serbia to drop the budget they “just didn’t believe in me.” Madonna added that Netflix reached out with interest to make a series but an entire new script had to be worked on unless they wanted to buy the film script from Universal for what she considered “an extortionist’s price.”
“That’s just the way it goes,” Madonna said. “I started trying to understand how making 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. This went on for another eight or nine months. I was like, ‘Good thing I have another job because I need to work, I need to create. I need to do what I was put on this earth to do.’”
“Ozark” star Julia Garner was tapped to play Madonna in the Universal biopic before it ended up being mothballed. The singer was also set to direct the film herself.
The post Madonna Suffered a ‘Falling Out’ With Universal Over Biopic Budget: ‘I’ve Had a Huge Life’ appeared first on TheWrap.
