Gimme More! Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt among A-list names looking to spend eight figures to bring Britney Spears’ best-selling The Woman in Me to the screen
Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me, seems destined for the silver screen, with many Hollywood producers lining up to pay tens of millions to adapt the book.
The Grammy-winning singer’s memoir, The Woman in Me, sold 1.1 million copies in the US alone in its first week, according to sales figures.
Reports have already suggested that some of the biggest names around are looking to bring her story to film or television, but the bidding war is already heating up.
Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, Shonda Rhimes and Reese Witherspoon are among the Hollywood power players who will bid somewhere in the mid-eight figures for the rights, according to The ankle boot.
Rhimes – whose Shondaland Productions brought global hits from Grey’s Anatomy to Bridgerton – wrote the famous screenplay for Crossroads, Spears’ 2002 foray into movie stardom.
Robbie’s LuckyChap Productions, Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine are also rumored to be bidding for the rights.
No clear frontrunner and no concrete meetings have taken place yet according to the book, and Spears’ team will likely wait out the period of the first releases.
The 41-year-old singer has rescheduled at least one meeting with a “top producer” in recent months.
“She doesn’t care who you are,” a producer who previously worked with Britney told The Ankler. ‘She’s always been that way. It’s just Britney.’
Producers are said to be “extremely sympathetic” and willing to wait until Spears is ready to bring the project to the screen.
DailyMail.com has contacted representatives for Spears, Plan B, Shondaland, Hello Sunshine and Robbie for comment.
Sales figures include pre-orders, print sales, e-books and audiobooks; Released on October 24, The Woman in Me is being praised by critics as a riveting account of her rise to global fame and her ongoing struggles.
The book includes accounts of the conservatorship that gave her father control over much of her life for years and her revelation that she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake more than two decades ago.
Shonda Rhimes – whose Shondaland Productions has produced global hits from Grey’s Anatomy to Bridgerton – wrote the famous screenplay for Crossroads, Spears’ 2002 foray into movie stardom
Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment is also rumored to be attempting to adapt Spears’ memoir
Margot Robbie (pictured left) and Reese Witherspoon (pictured right) are among Hollywood power players set to bid somewhere in the mid-eight figures for the rights
The latest: Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me sold 1.1 million copies in its first week in the US alone, according to sales figures
On the day of its publication, the Oops!… I Did It Again singer posted on Instagram that her book had become “the best-selling celebrity memoir in history.”
It’s not even the best-selling memoir of 2023 so far, as Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, released in January, sold 1.6 million US copies in its first week.
The Woman in Me, for which the Toxic artist did little publicity outside of Instagram, was last week’s bestseller.
Spears said it last month People she was relieved to be able to tell her account of her life after others had done so for years.
“For the last 15 years, or even early in my career, I sat back and let people talk about me and tell my story for me,” Spears said. “After coming out of conservatorship, I was finally free to tell my story without repercussions from the people in charge of my life.”
The audio edition of The Woman in Me, read by Oscar-nominated actor Michelle Williams, appears to be a key factor in the book’s initial popularity.
Williams’ reading of The Woman in Me was critically acclaimed and is the fastest-selling audio release in the company’s history, according to Gallery. The publisher did not immediately reveal a specific audio sales figure.
A fourth printing of the memoir is already planned, which will increase the total print run of hardcover copies to more than 1.4 million, the publisher said.
The singer was pictured in a revealing red dress on Tuesday as she celebrated the success of her bestseller
The singer praised the early sales success of her memoir on Instagram last week
“The book has been published in 26 languages/territories and is a #1 bestseller with an estimated 2.4 million copies in print worldwide” in countries including Britain, India and Australia, the publisher said.
Senior Vice President of Gallery Books Jennifer Bergstrom said the memoir “has been the subject of intense interest since its announcement and has received excellent critical acclaim since its publication.
“It is selling in extraordinary numbers across all editions worldwide, and we expect strong sales to continue through the holiday season and beyond. Readers and critics have embraced the Lucky singer’s candid and powerful memoir, which finally allows her to share her story on her own terms.
Spears’ memoir has boosted streams and sales across her music catalog, according to Luminate, a music and entertainment analytics company.
In one day last week, Monday through Tuesday, Spears’ catalog rose 18.2 percent in on-demand streams and 36.8 percent in album sales.
The numbers continued to rise in the following days. According to Luminate, its US streams are up 24 percent in the past week – from 16 million to 19.8 million; her album sales increased by 61.4 percent and digital sales by 49 percent.
According to Circana, which accounts for about 85 percent of the print market, The Woman in Me sold just under 418,000 copies, far below Circana’s first-week figures for former President Barack Obama’s A Promised Land and former first-term President Becoming, among others Lady Michelle Obama.
No non-fiction publication approaches the scale of JK Rowling’s last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which was released in 2007 and sold more than 8 million copies in its first 24 hours.