Britney Spears has lived enough public lives to fill the plot of several new movies. There was the teenage pop phenomenon, the tabloid years, the conservatorship and eventually The Woman in Me, the memoir that allowed Spears to tell much of that story herself. So when Universal announced plans to produce a page-to-screen adaptation of the memoir, I was immediately curious about which version of Britney’s life could fit into two-ish hours. We finally have a little more insight as the film’s writer just shared an update.
New Girl creator Elizabeth Meriwether, who signed on to write the movie earlier this summer, spoke with Vanity Fair about where things stand. Anyone hoping casting announcements are right around the corner may want to temper expectations, because Meriwether sounds like she is still figuring out exactly what movie she wants to make. She shared with the outlet:
I’m really at the beginning of the process of thinking about it. But I do feel like what she experienced was pretty unique for the moment that it was happening, almost a perfect storm of attention and new forms of media.
That “perfect storm” feels like a crucial piece of Spears’ story and will likely be the focal point of the upcoming biopic. She became one of the biggest celebrities on Earth right as celebrity coverage was turning particularly vicious. Spears was followed relentlessly by paparazzi, dissected by tabloids and treated as public property at a time when the internet was giving all of that scrutiny an entirely new engine.
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Looking back now, some of the interviews she sat through are astonishing. Grown adults routinely asked a teenage Spears about her virginity, her body and her relationships, then acted surprised when the pressure surrounding her eventually became impossible to ignore.
Meriwether seems particularly interested in revisiting that period with the benefit of hindsight. She told the outlet:
It’s almost like the question at the beginning of the interview about the New Girl notes. You find yourself in these conversations and everything seems normal, and then you go back 10 years later and look at that conversation and the whole foundation of it was wrong. I do think it’s the right time for this movie and the right moment to be looking back and thinking about it. I’m almost exactly her age, and I’m really excited to think about how to retell that story.
The biopic is based on Spears’ 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, which became a massive bestseller and gave readers her account of fame, relationships and the conservatorship that controlled much of her adult life. Universal landed the movie rights in 2024, with Wicked filmmaker Jon M. Chu attached to direct and Marc Platt producing. Meriwether officially joined the project in July. There is still no cast or release date, so don’t expect to catch it on the 2026 or even 2027 movie calendar, as Meriwether’s comments suggest we probably shouldn’t expect it to hit theaters soon.
That is fine by me. Spears’ life has already been packaged, judged and retold by other people for decades. A movie about her probably benefits from somebody spending a little time deciding what exactly the story is before worrying about who to cast in the role or to fire up the cameras.