A Britney Spears biopic is in the works, Universal Pictures announced Thursday, after buying the rights to the pop star’s uncompromising memoir.
The director of Crazy Rich AsiansJon Chu, is tapped to direct the film, the company said in a statement.
It will be based on the singer’s autobiographical book, The Woman in Mepublished last October and which has sold more than 2.5 million copies in the United States alone.
Universal has won a “highly competitive auction” for the film rights and the producer of La La LandMarc Platt, is expected to oversee the project, the statement said.
“I’m working on a secret project with #MarcPlatt. He’s always made my favorite movies,” Britney Spears announced on social media Thursday.
The book allowed the singer to reclaim her story, once freed from the guardianship that had governed every aspect of her life for 13 years.
The interpreter of… Baby One More Time She returns to the legal battles that pitted her against her family and doesn’t evade anything: from her poor childhood spent in the shadow of an alcoholic father, to her romantic disappointments with Justin Timberlake, including the harassment of the paparazzi.
She reveals that Justin Timberlake pushed her to have an abortion during their relationship.
After her descent into hell in 2007, the singer was placed under the guardianship of her father Jamie Spears, who controlled her money and her private life, even as she performed concerts in Las Vegas.
“If I wasn’t able to make decisions, why was I considered capable of performing in public?” the singer asks in her book, recounting that she was no longer even in control of her diet.
Encouraged by her fans, who gathered under the slogan “Free Britney”, the pop star ended up rebelling and the American justice system overturned this guardianship in 2021.
Her father always maintained that he had his daughter’s best interests at heart.
The film does not yet have a release date.
Universal has previously released musical biopics about hip-hop group NWA (Straight Outta Compton) and on rapper Eminem (8 Mile).
The studio is also preparing other biopics on the life of rapper Snoop Dogg and that of singer Prince, who died in 2021.
