It’s Britney’s biopic, bitch.
I spent roughly 13 minutes on Thursday in a manic state of befuddlement over Britney Spears’ latest tweet. With all due respect my pop star queen, confusion over a Britney Spears social media post has become a fairly regular occurrence in recent years. But there was a specificity to what Spears was posting about that lent the tease an even more urgent “WHAT DOES THIS MEAN????” than usual.
“Excited to share with my fans that I've been working on a secret project with #MarcPlatt. He’s always made my favorite movies … stay tuned,” she wrote.
Hadn’t Spears been vocal about her disinterest in working again or returning to the scrutiny of the limelight? Does this mean she’s backtracking and is going to, of all, things, star in a movie?! Moreover, Britney Spears knows who producer Marc Platt is, as well as his filmography? And what, then, is her favorite Marc Platt film? Charlie St. Cloud? Drive? Mary Poppins Returns?
All was clarified soon after the tweet was sent, with Variety reporting that a Britney Spears biopic is in the works. Universal Pictures has obtained the rights to her bombshell memoir, The Woman in Me, with Jon M. Chu, who is currently finishing up the Wicked films, directing, and Spears’ apparent favorite filmmaker, Platt, producing.
The Ankler reports that the deal was in the eight-figure range, including publishing rights to Spears’ music catalog. (God, I hadn’t even thought of a Spears biopic that didn’t have rights to her music…) The production companies of Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, and Shonda Rhimes had all expressed interest, meaning Spears pushed off the chance to reunite with her Crossroads screenwriter.
That’s all the info there is right now on the project that has a 99.9 percent chance of never happening. Still! The headline exists, and it’s fun to cast judgment on a project that at this point is only hypothetical.
Will it do Spears and her complicated career justice? Will it dig into the darkness she’s survived, or will it, like all attempts at a Whitney Houston project, be a controlled hagiography? Plus, remember how exploitative the media’s coverage was of the more shocking anecdotes from Spears’ memoir? Would a biopic like this stoke the same, shameful instincts—something that Spears clearly was not a fan of during her book’s rollout?
Then there’s the biggest question of all: Who could possibly play Britney?
The Daily Beast’s Slack channel was sparking with suggestions. “This is Sydney Sweeney’s Oscar moment,” one colleague wrote, to the approval of several others. Annaleigh Ashford was an inspired choice. Anya Taylor-Joy was also mentioned, though shadily: She’d be “the stiffest Britney.”
While this would be a blockbuster role for any A-list celeb, I expect that the majority of this movie would take place during Spears’ teens and twenties, when she was the biggest star in the world. All of those suggestions, then, probably skew too old. Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo should definitely be getting their agents on the phone, though.
This is the kind of project that screams for an unknown to take on the role. It could be a star-is-born moment, akin to when Jennifer Lopez played Selena. Or maybe Universal will go the Madonna biopic route and stage a very public bootcamp, sending a red carpet’s worth of major actresses through a triple-threat gauntlet to see who’s worthy of channeling Spears.
In any case, if you read any of this news about a Britney Spears movie and haven’t been singing her song “Lucky” in your head the entire time, then you’re not a true fan. Real ones know.
