LOS ANGELES — Madonna’s long-stalled biopic is reportedly being repurposed for Season 2 of Apple TV+’s “The Studio,” with Variety reporting April 8 that Madonna and Julia Garner will appear in a two-episode arc built around a fictionalized version of the scrapped movie. The setup would let Seth Rogen’s Hollywood satire turn a real-life development saga into story fuel while bringing Madonna back into scripted live-action work tied to the project that never reached production.
What is official is the broader backdrop: Apple TV+ renewed “The Studio” for a second season. The streamer has not publicly outlined a Madonna-centered plotline, but Entertainment Weekly reported in March that Madonna was filming in Venice for the new season, giving the trade report more weight than a typical rumor.
Madonna biopic gets a second life inside “The Studio”
According to Variety’s account, the series will not just toss in a one-line joke. It will reportedly build a two-episode run around Continental Studios shepherding a faux Madonna biopic toward Venice, with Garner looping back to a version of the role she once landed in real life. Variety also said Madonna would not play the director of the fictional movie, keeping the premise closer to parody than straight reenactment.
That approach matches the series’ brand. “The Studio” built its first season around Hollywood anxiety, awards-season calculation and image management, making a half-made prestige biopic a particularly natural plot engine. In practical terms, the Madonna movie may finally reach audiences by becoming a satire of its own history.
How the Madonna biopic got here
The project has swerved for years. In 2022, The Guardian reported that Julia Garner had landed the role of Madonna after the project’s much-discussed audition gauntlet. By early 2023, the planned Universal feature had been scrapped, even as Madonna signaled she still wanted to tell her story on screen.
The story shifted again in 2024, when Madonna resurfaced with a screenplay titled “Who’s That Girl”, suggesting the feature was not entirely dead. Then, in May 2025, a separate Madonna limited series at Netflix with Shawn Levy was reported to be in early development, underscoring how her life story kept changing formats without disappearing.
What this means now
For the moment, the reported “The Studio” arc looks more like commentary on the axed film than a replacement for a stand-alone Madonna screen biography. But that may be why it works. Instead of pretending the original project never collapsed, the series appears ready to use that collapse as the premise.
The cleanest takeaway is that the Madonna biopic keeps finding new formats instead of going away. Whether this version plays like a clever detour or a bridge to a more conventional life story, it turns one of Hollywood’s more stubborn stalled projects back into a conversation piece.
