Universal picks up Madonna biopic, Freddie Mercury gets release date

Universal Pictures has bought the script for the Madonna biopic Blonde Ambition, the Hollywood Reporter reveals.

Penned by LA writer Elyse Hollander, it is based around the time when the Material Girl left her hometown of Michigan and landed in New York City in the early 1980s to kickstart her career and make her first album Madonna in 1983.

The album yielded hits Holiday, Borderline and Lucky Star and sold 2 million in the US.

She followed it up with the global blockbuster Like A Virgin (1984) which gave Madonna her first chart-topper in Australia and was the first female artist ever to sell over 5 million units in the U.S.

Blonde Ambition had the most votes (48) on the 2016 Black List – the annual list of popular unproduced screenplays voted for by Hollywood development executives. In second place was Life Itself, by This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman.

This is Hollander’s first big budget movie. An assistant to Oscar-winning Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu when he made Birdman, she has until now only been involved in short filmsIt Was Romance (2011), Nikolai (2013) and An Ode To Demons (2011).

Universal Pictures’ Erik Baiers and Chloe Yellin will join the project’s early producers.

These were Brett Ratner’s RatPac Entertainment (which James Packer was partner of until Len Blavatnik’s Access Entertainment bought out his share last week), Michael DeLuca’s DeLuca Productions, and Bellvue Productions.

In the meantime, the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody is to hit US cinemas on December 25, 2018.

It is directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) and stars Mr. Robot’s award-winning lead Rami Malek in the lead role of the iconic Queen singer who died in 1991 of AIDS-related complications.

The movie has been in development for eight years, with a number of directors and lead actors coming in and exiting.

The most famous was Sacha Baron Cohen who said he left after disagreements with the rest of Queen, who are music producers on the project, on how the singer should have been portrayed. But Queen have disputed his version, saying Cohen had “become an arse”.

Ben Whishaw was also cast but left, again citing creative differences.

Tom Hooper, Stephen Frears and Dexter Fletcher had all previously been linked to direct.