Britney Spears biopic is still in the works, says writer Liz Meriwether
The film was first announced in 2024, when Universal won the rights to The Woman in Me following a competitive bidding process
By Callum Wells
The Britney Spears biopic is still in the works, according to the writer behind it.
Liz Meriwether, who is adapting Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me for Universal Pictures, has given an update on the film as she begins work on the screenplay.
Meriwether, who created New Girl and most recently worked on Hulu series Furious, confirmed that she is still in the early stages of developing the movie.
“I’m really at the beginning of the process of thinking about it” – Liz Meriwether on adapting Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me
“I’m really at the beginning of the process of thinking about it,” she told Vanity Fair. “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.”
The film was first announced in 2024, when Universal won the rights to The Woman in Me following a competitive bidding process. Jon M. Chu, who directed Crazy Rich Asians and the Wicked films, is attached to direct, while Marc Platt is producing. Spears is also involved with the project.
Meriwether was announced as the screenwriter in July 2026. It marks her return to feature films after 15 years.
Her previous film credit was 2011’s No Strings Attached. Since then, she has worked primarily in television, including New Girl, Single Parents, Bless This Mess, The Dropout, Dying for Sex and Furious.
“It’s really interesting because I haven’t written a movie in a long time” – Meriwether on approaching the script
She told Variety that adapting Spears’ story means changing the way she approaches a script.
“It’s really interesting because I haven’t written a movie in a long time, so that’s been part of the process: just trying to think in a two-hour story as opposed to like an eight-hour story, which is what I’ve been used to doing.”
Meriwether has been going back through Spears’ music while she writes. She said she wants to understand the period in which Spears became one of the biggest pop stars in the world.
“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.
The film will cover Spears’ childhood, career, relationships, motherhood and the 13-year conservatorship that ended in 2021.