By Ganna Mahmoud

The anticipated Madonna biopic has been scrapped. After a tedious casting bootcamp, with Jennifer Garner landing the role, and a plethora of social media posts promoting the film, it has reportedly been dropped from Universal.

The 29-year-old actress, Julia Garner, had been selected to play renowned singer Madonna in her upcoming biopic, after a lengthy casting process. Garner is best known for playing Anna Delvy in the Netflix show, “Inventing Anna”. She is also known as Ruth Langmore in the other Netflix series, Ozak. 

Madonna wrote the film and directed it herself. The film is mainly about her music and singing career from start to finish, with additional scenes about her personal life.

She worked on multiple scripts to ensure and highlight the most important concepts of both her career and personal life. Madonna said that most of the scripts she read were written by men, and therefore did not understand her perspective or represent her in an accurate light. 

Nobody, in the history of the entertainment industry, has produced a multi-million dollar film about themselves. 

Although the film would show a deep, emotional side of her, Madonna wanted to concentrate on the evolution of her career and sound. 

“The focus of this film will always be music,” she mentioned. 

While working on the production, she talks about the amount of love and passion she has for music. How music is the reason she accomplished a lot and how it deeply fulfills her life, energy, and spirit. 

In the beginning, Madonna was working on the script with the famous Oscar-winning Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody, but in the Spring of 2021, he decided not to be part of the project. 

September 2020 is when the movie was initially announced; the idea was not official until 2022, when Julia was picked as the top choice to play Madonna.

It was not an easy decision or audition as Hollywood has plenty of actresses who nearly resemble Madonna, and as a result, Julia was seen as the perfect choice. Actresses like Alexa Demie, from “Euphoria”, Florence Pugh and Odessa were candidates of the audition but did not earn the role. 

The production was exceedingly demanding and exhausting. Julia participated in many singing auditions, lessons and workshops in order for the world to hear her singing in the movie without the help of lip-synching or using Madonna’s own songs. 

More than eleven hours of dance, reading and choreography classes took place as well.

Madonna’s goal of the biopic was more than just how she got her music career and personal life. 

“Convey the incredible journey that life has to take me on as an artist, a musician and a human trying to make in this world,” she stated. 

One of the concepts in her movie is the struggle and survival of her, as a woman artist, in male-dominated world, she stated.

It is about expressing the spirit of the journey, the rollercoaster ride of her life, the ups and downs she faced. 

However, the project has seemingly come to a halt, after a report was released by Variety on Jan. 24. It states multiple sources have confirmed that the project is no longer in development with Universal. 

Madonna and Universal have declined to comment on the alleged cancellation.