Britney Spears biopic still in works, screenwriter Liz Meriwether says "it's the right time for this movie"

Los Angeles [US], September 1 (ANI): The planned biopic on pop star Britney Spears is still in development, with screenwriter Elizabeth “Liz” Meriwether confirming that the project is in its early stages and saying she believes now is the right time to revisit the singer’s life and career, according to People.

Meriwether, creator of ‘New Girl’ and writer of the upcoming film, told Vanity Fair that she is still beginning work on the screenplay based on Spears’ memoir ‘The Woman in Me’.

“I’m really at the beginning of the process of thinking about it,” Meriwether, 44, said in an interview published on Monday.

“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,” she added, according to People.

Spears, 44, rose to global fame as a teenager in the late 1990s with her debut album …Baby One More Time. The title track and its schoolgirl-inspired music video became defining moments of the era.

She went on to release successful albums including Oops!… I Did It Again, Britney, In the Zone, Blackout and Circus. Spears also made her acting debut in the 2002 film Crossroads.

Her rise to fame was followed by years of intense public scrutiny and personal struggles. In 2008, Spears was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship that remained in place for nearly 14 years before being terminated in November 2021.

Spears later detailed her childhood, rise to fame, relationships, motherhood, career and conservatorship in her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me. The book became a bestseller and serves as the source material for the planned film.

Universal Pictures acquired the rights to the memoir in August 2024, with Jon M. Chu attached to direct and Marc Platt producing. Spears had also confirmed her involvement in the project.

Meriwether said she has read the memoir and listened to its audiobook, narrated by Michelle Williams, multiple times.

“That audiobook, if people haven’t listened to it, is one of the best audiobooks that’s ever been made. Michelle is unbelievable. It’s like a monologue. I told her that her performance of the audiobook broke my heart in so many ways,” Meriwether told The Hollywood Reporter on August 24, according to People.

Praising Williams’ narration, Meriwether said, “She’s being true to Britney and also telling a story in the way she’s reading it.”

She jokingly suggested an unusual approach to the film, saying, “Another spoiler: Michelle’s a really good actor. Maybe I’ll turn a script in to Mark [Platt] and Jon [M. Chu] that’s just Michelle on a stage, reading. I wonder what will happen.”

As she develops the screenplay, Meriwether has also been revisiting Spears’ music and the wider musical landscape of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“I’ve been listening to a lot of music that was happening around the time that she was making music. That’s out of necessity. I want to just get the feeling that moment in time or just remind myself,” she said.

Meriwether, who is the same age as Spears, said the music has helped her reconnect with the period.

“I’m exactly Britney’s age, so a lot of that music just takes me like immediately back,” she said.

She has been listening through Spears’ “whole catalog” and creating a playlist, highlighting two songs in particular.

“I really love ‘Perfume’ and ‘If I’m Dancing.’ She’s made a lot of albums. Her hits have been such big hits that I think there are a lot of songs that people don’t think of,” Meriwether said.

The project marks Meriwether’s return to feature-film writing following 2011’s No Strings Attached. In the years since, she co-created Single Parents and Bless This Mess and worked as a writer and producer on The Dropout and Dying for Sex. Her latest series, Furious, recently completed its first season and has been renewed for a second season on Hulu, according to People.

Meriwether said working with Chu and Platt has been collaborative and described the process as “different and, in some ways, liberating.”

“They’re collaborative and it’s been great,” she said. “I’m so used to being the final word on everything, but it feels really relaxing at the moment because I’m writing something and I don’t have to be the one to figure this out…I get to just be a writer and that’s fun.”

She also believes the film comes at a time when audiences are increasingly examining how women in the public eye were treated, particularly during the 1990s and early 2000s.

“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,” she said.

Meriwether added, “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,” according to People.

The Britney Spears biopic currently has no official release date, while details about the screenplay and casting have yet to be announced. (ANI)

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