Madonna can complain all she wants, but she won’t be able to stop “Blond Ambition,” the unauthorized biopic about her rise to pop stardom.
Since news broke that Universal had bought the screenplay by Elyse Hollander for Brett Ratner and Mike De Luca to produce, Madonna has been trashing the project on Instagram.
But since she didn’t write many of her early hits, and doesn’t control the copyrights to those songs, she has no way to stop the music from being used in the movie.
Madonna wrote “Everybody” and “Lucky Star,” and could block them from the movie, but she didn’t write “Holiday,” “Crazy for You,” “Borderline,” “Like a Virgin,” “Material Girl” and “Dress You Up.”
“The songwriters would love to have their songs on the soundtrack. They aren’t going to walk away from a payday,” one source told me. “That’s what they live for.”
Sources say Ratner and De Luca have reached out to the rights holders for their cooperation on the movie, but decisions have not yet been made.
If they get on board, there is little Madonna could do to stop it. De Luca went up against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to produce “The Social Network.”
“Zuckerberg is 10 times as powerful as Madonna, and he couldn’t stop that movie,” my source said.