{"id":711822,"date":"2026-04-07T21:07:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T21:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/711822\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T21:07:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T21:07:15","slug":"madonna-movie-revived-in-the-studio-season-2-with-julia-garner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/711822\/","title":{"rendered":"Madonna Movie Revived in ‘The Studio’ Season 2 With Julia Garner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen a movie is scrapped in the development stage \u2014 as countless have been \u2014 it\u2019s usually memorialized by an intern sending a script through the shredder. When you\u2019re Madonna<\/a>, however, you get a Viking funeral with an Apple TV budget.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what paparazzi photos from Italy revealed two weeks ago, when the pop icon was captured filming scenes in Venice for the second season of Seth Rogen\u2019s \u201cThe Studio<\/a>.\u201d Madonna\u2019s appearance on the acclaimed series will draw on her recent Hollywood struggles to get a biopic about her own life made.<\/p>\n

Madonna hasn\u2019t appeared on TV since shooting a cameo on \u201cWill & Grace\u201d in 2003, and she hasn\u2019t starred in a film since 2002\u2019s disastrous remake of \u201cSwept Away.\u201d So it\u2019s no small feat for Rogen to recruit her for \u201cThe Studio,\u201d a forensic look at life inside a legacy movie company battling for relevance and survival. It helped, however, that many other moguls and A-listers have been willing to send up their image on the Emmy-winning series. The first season attracted heavyweights like Martin Scorsese, Charlize Theron, Zo\u00eb Kravitz and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, all playing themselves. What\u2019s more interesting, according to two sources, is how Rogen\u2019s show will use the real-life circumstances around the singer\u2019s scrapped biopic to illustrate the challenges of modern moviemaking. Madonna will appear in a two-episode arc, the sources add.<\/p>\n

First, some history. In 2021, Universal Pictures won a multi-studio auction to make a film about Madonna\u2019s life. Amy Pascal was on board to produce, and Madonna would co-write and direct the project. Top actresses, including Florence Pugh, endured a grueling audition process that included a singing and dancing \u201cboot camp.\u201d Julia Garner<\/a>, the Emmy-winning star of \u201cInventing Anna\u201d and \u201cOzark,\u201d won the part in 2022. Insiders say the film would have followed Madonna from her humble beginnings in Michigan through her artistic coming of age in the gritty New York City of the \u201980s, leading right up to the 1998 release of \u201cRay of Light\u201d (an album that brought her a dramatic reinvention and new heights of stardom).<\/p>\n

\n\tSeveral script rewrites came down before the film was shelved entirely in 2023, as Madonna\u2019s longtime manager Guy Oseary convinced her to go on a career-spanning, blockbuster world tour and leave her directorial ambitions behind. Eventually, rights to her life and music catalog lapsed at Universal. Netflix is now developing an autobiographical series about her, via director Shawn Levy\u2019s exclusive TV deal at the streamer. Garner is not attached to that version.<\/p>\n

\n\tThose who wished to see Garner clad in fishnets and rubber bracelets as the Material Girl will still have a chance. Sort of. The \u201cStudio\u201d scripts will rewrite history, subbing in Rogen\u2019s fictional company Continental Studios as the producer-financier of the Madonna-Garner movie that never was. The core Continental team \u2014 played by Rogen, Kathryn Hahn, Bryan Cranston, Ike Barinholtz and Chase Sui Wonders \u2014 takes the biopic to Italy for a splashy debut at the Venice Film Festival, where Madonna and Garner are on hand to hype the project and nab some Oscar buzz, sources say. Another insider close to production said that, in \u201cThe Studio,\u201d Madonna will not play the director of her fictional biopic. Emmy winner Donald Glover was also photographed on the Italian set with the singer and Garner, so we\u2019ll let you draw your own conclusions. And, as many industry insiders predicted, the back half of Madonna\u2019s episodes focuses on the all-important debate around journalists timing festival standing ovations to provide a sense of how films will play in the wider world. Trust us \u2014 it\u2019s a whole thing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Madonna get represents an impressive high-wire act for Rogen and \u201cThe Studio\u201d co-creator Evan Goldberg, one that required them to land an image-conscious megastar and convince her to resurrect a real project that failed to launch. We have a sneaking suspicion that Madonna will get her Hollywood ending, at least by the standards of \u201cThe Studio.\u201d A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment on the matter. An Apple TV spokesperson couldn\u2019t be reached for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf nothing else, the Venice shoot gave fans a viral moment 41 years in the making. Garner and Madonna paid homage to the 1984 music video for \u201cLike a Virgin,\u201d pouting to camera and gliding in a gondola down the Venice canals. If only development moved so easily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a movie is scrapped in the development stage \u2014 as countless have been \u2014 it\u2019s usually memorialized…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":711823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[185,171,56781,24991,40005,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-711822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-julia-garner","tag-madonna","tag-the-studio","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116365469259742455","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}