Madonna has just made a big confession about the genesis of her next album, Confessions II, which she says was born out of frustration over the repeated rejections of her biopic.
In her interview cover story published on Monday (June 22), the pop superstar finally spoke candidly from her perspective about why the long-awaited film project has experienced so many delays. “I was supposed to make a movie about my life,” she began. “I worked on the script for two years, and I spent two years at Universal Studios working with the line producers on budgeting and casting. Universal and I clashed over the budget because we needed it. I’ve lived an extraordinary life. I’ve lived an extraordinary life, so I needed a big budget.”
“I found a cheaper way to stay in Serbia, but I don’t think they were into the idea…One of their first reactions was, ‘I can’t imagine staying in Serbia for more than four days,'” Madge continued. “So I said, ‘Have you read the script?’ My whole life has been survival. I’m not going to go there on vacation. Anyway, when that fell apart, I was at a loss, but then Netflix reached out to make the series.”
Madonna went on to say that she began work on turning the project into a multi-part series, but was once again stalled when Universal allegedly prohibited her from using the script she originally wrote “unless they bought it at a usurper’s price, even though I had written it.”
Billboard has reached out to Universal for comment.
The biopic’s journey was back to square one, with Icon spending “eight to nine months” trying to find the best writer and showrunner for the series, before realizing that production could not continue without another creative outlet. “I thought, ‘I’m glad I have another job because I have to work and I have to create,'” Madonna recalls. “I said, ‘If Netflix doesn’t call my favorite author tomorrow, I’m going to start down this path.'”
That’s when she contacted producer Stuart Price to begin work on Confessions II, a follow-up to her beloved 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor. “I thought the world was in a very dark place and people needed to dance,” she said, explaining that many of the sequel’s songs were inspired by the deaths of her stepmother and brother.
“Of course, halfway through the process, more than 75 percent of the way through, we found the writer. [for the Netflix series]”I thought, ‘There’s no turning back,'” she added. We have to turn this up a little bit. ‘So that’s what I did. ”
The Madonna biopic was first announced by Universal Pictures in 2020. Julia Garner was cast in the lead role, and the queen of pop worked on two versions of the script before news broke in 2023 that the project had been scrapped by the studio. In May 2025, the seven-time Grammy Award winner teamed up with Shawn Levy to produce an autobiographical series about her life, but a few months later the Weapons actress appeared to hint that she was still involved.
“I can’t say too much, but yeah,” Garner said in a video for W Magazine in September. “It’s a work in progress.”
Meanwhile, the actress recently appeared in Madonna and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Bring Your Love” music video, which was released in early June ahead of the July 3 release of “Confessions II.”
Check out photos from the shoot with Madonna, who graced the cover of Interview, below.
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