Madonna’s Darkest Secrets: Pop Icon Set to Use New ‘Who’s That Girl’ Biopic to Lift Lid on Hidden Life
July 17 2024, Updated 3:59 p.m. ET
Madonna's long-in-the-works biopic is back on track – and the Queen of Pop is going to use it to shed a bit of light on some of her darkest secrets.
A source told RadarOnline.com: “This biopic is going to be explosive. Madonna is renowned for not holding back, and this movie is going to be as sexy and dark as her 1990s behind-the-scenes film Truth or Dare and her Sex coffee table book.
“She’s also going to tell all about how she almost died in 2023, her new string of young lovers, and how she’s been battling back to health and getting closer to her kids.”
Madonna confirmed she was returning to the highly anticipated biopic with a slideshow on Instagram showing her hard at work on the movie's script. She captioned the post: “I Need A-lot of Bandz to make this………..OKAY.”
One photo revealed that the film, which was previously untitled, is now called Who’s That Girl – a reference to Madonna’s song from the soundtrack to the 1987 film of the same name.
The screenplay is credited to Madonna herself and “ECW,” or Erin Cressida Wilson, who worked on an early script alongside the singer and the Oscar-winning Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody.
Madonna first announced the project, which she was set to direct herself, in September 2020. This latest update comes nearly a year and a half after the movie, which had already been delayed, was apparently scrapped by Universal Pictures.
Entertainment Weekly reports that Inventing Anna and Ozark actress Julia Garner, who was chosen by Madonna to star in the film after besting the competition in a singing and dancing boot camp, is still attached to lead.
After the biopic was put on pause, the pop icon suffered a near-fatal health scare that forced her to postpone a global Celebration Tour. After her recovery, she even invited Garner to the stage during a tour stop in Brooklyn in December.
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Madonna has previously said that the movie would follow her “struggle as an artist trying to survive in a man's world as a woman, and really just the journey,” which she described as “happy, sad, mad, crazy, good, bad, and ugly”.
Sources claimed that the Queen of Pop clashed with the studio over the direction of the film, with Madonna favoring a “gritty storyline” and Universal angling for a more “lighthearted flick”.