Britney Spears movie moving forward, writer confirms

A movie about Britney Spears' life is still being worked on. 

The confirmation has come from the film's screenwriter, Elizabeth "Liz" Meriwether, known for creating the show New Girl. 

Reflecting on the upcoming Spears biopic, she said the project is still in its early stages but believes now is a good time to tell Spears's story.

"I'm really at the beginning of the process of thinking about it," Meriwether, 44, said in a new Vanity Fair interview on August 31. “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.”

Spears, 44, became famous as a teenager in the late 1990s after her first album ...Baby One More Time made her a huge star. She went on to release several more albums and also acted in a movie in 2002, titled Crossroads.

Behind her fame, Spears faced serious struggles, which eventually led to her being placed under a legal conservatorship in 2008 that lasted almost 14 years before ending in 2021.

Spears later wrote about her life in a memoir The Woman in Me released in 2023, which became a bestseller. That book is now being used as the basis for the upcoming movie. 

Universal Pictures bought the rights to the story in 2024, and director Jon M. Chu is set to lead the project.

Meriwether shared that she feels a personal connection to the story, since she is close to Spears's age. “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.

She also 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.”

No release date or cast has been announced yet.