Yes, there’s been a Britney Spears biopic in the works for a few years now, to be directed by Jon M. Chu, and Page Six Hollywood is now reporting that it’s moving forward, having recently hired screenwriter Liz Meriwether (“New Girl”) to pen the script.
Meriwether — she wrote “No Strings Attached” and the acclaimed series “Dying for Sex” — will be taking over the first draft that had been written by Chu and Marc Platt, adapting Spears’ bestselling memoir, “The Woman in Me.”
The 2023 memoir tackled Spears’ childhood in Louisiana, her early rise to teenage stardom, past relationships, including her three-year romance with Justin Timberlake, and the infamous conservatorship battle with her parents.
Many believed the project to have stalled, but “Michael,” which became the highest-grossing biopic of all time, currently at $990M worldwide, probably changed a few minds over at Universal.
Chu’s coming off back-to-back “Wicked” installments. He is also known as the director of 2018’s “Crazy Rich Asians.” His other credits include “Now You See Me 2,” “In the Heights,” “Jem and the Holograms,” and “G.I. Joe: Retaliation.”
Spears has sold nearly 150M albums worldwide, and she was just a teenager when she became the biggest pop star in the world with her first No. 1 single, “…Baby One More Time.” A biopic of her wild career is a risky endeavor, as she’s still very much embroiled in constant drama.
Much like “Michael,” will this biopic be a biased portrayal of the singer? Quite likely. After all, it’s based on her own memoir. In recent years, Spears has turned into this controversial public figure, hounded by tabloids and embroiled in a conservatorship case, which she was placed under involuntarily in 2008. She finally got out of the conservatorship in 2021, but that freedom came with a cost, including lots of strange behavior on her part.
Spears, 44, is currently serving 12 months of probation after pleading guilty to reckless driving after being arrested in March for a DUI.
This is a significant update for a project that has been stuck in development for years, and comes roughly a year after Brolin said “Sicario 3” was a maybe.