Britney Biopic in Works as Universal Buys Memoir Rights

US pop star Britney Spears. (Reuters)

Asharq Al Awsat

08:24-2 August 2024 AD ـ 27 Muharram 1446 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

08:24-2 August 2024 AD ـ 27 Muharram 1446 AH

Britney Biopic in Works as Universal Buys Memoir Rights

US pop star Britney Spears. (Reuters)

A Britney Spears biopic is in development after Universal Pictures bought movie rights to the pop star's best-selling memoir, the Hollywood studio announced Thursday.
"Crazy Rich Asians" director Jon Chu is attached to develop and direct the film, based on Spears's recent autobiographical book "The Woman In Me," the company said in a statement to AFP.
Universal won a "highly competitive auction" for the film adaptation rights, with "La La Land" producer Marc Platt due to oversee the project, it said.
"Excited to share with my fans that I've been working on a secret project with #MarcPlatt. He's always made my favorite movies," Spears herself posted on social media Thursday.
"Stay tuned," she told fans.
"The Woman In Me" laid bare the troubled singer's journey from child star to global pop phenomenon, as well as her subsequent high-profile public breakdown and legal battles with her father.
Full of criticism of her controlling family and an industry that mercilessly devours its talent, the book sold over 2.5 million copies in the United States alone following its publication last October.
Spears's phenomenal early music success with late 1990s hits like "...Baby One More Time" coincided with an aggressive paparazzi culture that delighted in capturing her partying alongside hell-raisers like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.
In the book, Spears revealed that Justin Timberlake urged her to have an abortion after she became pregnant during their relationship.
And she shared details of her brief but intense affair with Irish actor and Oscar nominee Colin Farrell, which she called "a two-week brawl."
Following Spears's public breakdown, she was placed under the conservatorship of her father Jamie Spears, who controlled her money and her personal life, even as she continued to perform high-profile concerts.
The conservatorship was dissolved by a Los Angeles court in 2021, after a groundswell of public support to "Free Britney."
Her father has always insisted that he had the best interests of his daughter at heart and was seeking to protect her from exploitation.
No release date has been set for the Britney film.
Universal has previously released musical biopics about hip-hop group N.W.A ("Straight Outta Compton") and rapper Eminem ("8 Mile.")
Chu is also directing Universal's big-budget, two-part movie adaptation of the musical "Wicked," with the first film out in November.

Entertainment

‘I’m Still Here’: Joan Chen Plays Thwarted Immigrant Mom in ‘Didi'

Chinese-American actress Joan Chen poses during a photocall for Chinese director Jia Zhang Ke's film '24 City' at the 61st Cannes International Film Festival on May 17, 2008 in Cannes, southern France. (AFP)

07:19-4 August 2024 AD ـ 29 Muharram 1446 AH

‘I’m Still Here’: Joan Chen Plays Thwarted Immigrant Mom in ‘Didi'

Long before Joan Chen charmed Western audiences with seductive turns in "The Last Emperor" and "Twin Peaks" she was a child star in China, hand-picked for her debut movie role by Mao Zedong's wife.

That remarkable personal journey, from Red Army propaganda movies to glamorous Hollywood roles directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and David Lynch, could not appear more different to Chen's character in new coming-of-age film "Didi."

Chen plays Chungsing, a Taiwanese single mom and frustrated artist in California, whose 13-year-old is too busy trying to impress his skater friends and navigate adolescent crushes to be nice to his family.

Yet the role -- which is already earning Oscars buzz -- "poured out of me, because that's the life I've lived," Chen told AFP.

"I am, like Chungsing, an immigrant mother, who raised two American children -- with such an intimate, loving relationship, but also fraught with cultural chasm, misunderstanding, unmet expectations," she said.

It all started for Chen, aged 14, when she was spotted by a film director who worked for Chairman Mao's wife Jiang Qing.

"The director picked me out of school, then sent my dossier and my pictures for her to approve," recalls Chen.

"I was so happy that I happened to be the type that they needed. It wasn't my dream. I never thought about it, when they picked me to be an actress. And then slowly, I learned to love it."

She quickly became a beloved movie star in 1970s China -- a job that spared her from being sent to work in rural provinces during the devastating Cultural Revolution.

Chen moved to the US at age 20, studying film but skeptical about her prospects as an Asian woman in Hollywood.

She landed a lead role in Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor," as the wife of China's final dynastic ruler. The film won nine Oscars, including best picture.

Yet Chen, now 63, recalls: "Back then, there just weren't any Asian filmmakers or scriptwriters who could create a part for me."

"I could have been this ingenue, this breakout new lead (actress)... So that was a shame. Nothing could really follow up."

- 'Still here' -

In "Didi," out in theaters on August 16, Chen's character is a talented artist who had to forsake her ambitions for her family, in their new country.

Chungsing is stoic, quietly bearing her disappointment while devoting herself to her frequently oblivious, Americanized children.

Unlike her character, Chen continued to work prolifically through parenthood, acting and directing in both the US and Asian film industries.

Chen's part as femme fatale Josie Packard in "Twin Peaks" remains popular with fans of the cult TV series to this day.

But her Western roles have failed to match the success of her early career.

And she still reflects on the "night and day" difference between her daughters' experience growing up in the West, and her own arrival in the United States as an immigrant, with "that uncertainty of the ground you're standing on."

"The pains and joys we see in the film is a lived experience for myself as well," said Chen.

With "Didi" winning awards at the Sundance film festival, there are hints of a late-career comeback. Chen and director Sean Wang are earning mentions as dark horses for the next Academy Awards.

"I am so thrilled that young filmmakers like Sean exist... when there are enough scriptwriters, directors, then you create more parts for people who look like them," she said.

"It's wonderful. And I'm so happy that I'm still here."

Britney Biopic in Works as Universal Buys Memoir Rights

Britney Biopic in Works as Universal Buys Memoir Rights

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‘I’m Still Here’: Joan Chen Plays Thwarted Immigrant Mom in ‘Didi'

‘I’m Still Here’: Joan Chen Plays Thwarted Immigrant Mom in ‘Didi'

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