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 big screen
Britney Spears‘ smash hit memoir The Woman in Me appears destined for the big screen, with Hollywood A-listers lining up to pay up to tens of millions to adapt the book.
The Grammy-winning singer’s memoir has sold 1.1 million copies in the U.S. alone through its first week, according to sales figures.
Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, Shonda Rhimes and Reese Witherspoon are among the power players in Hollywood set to bid somewhere in the ‘mid-eight figures’ range for the rights, according to The Ankler.
Rhimes – whose Shondaland Productions has brought the world smash hits from Grey’s Anatomy to Bridgerton – famously wrote the screenplay for Crossroads, Spears’ 2002 foray into film stardom.
The Grammy-winning singer’s memoir has sold 1.1 million copies in the U.S. alone through its first week, according to sales figures.
Robbie’s LuckyChap Productions, Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine are also rumored to be bidding on the rights.
No clear frontrunner and no concrete meetings have happened yet on the book, with Spears’ team likely to wait out the early release period.
The singer, 41, has rescheduled at least one meeting with a ‘top producer’ in the past several months.
‘She doesn’t give a shit 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 supposedly ‘extremely compassionate’ and willing to wait until Spears is ready to take the project to the screen.
DailyMail.com has reached out to representatives for Spears, Plan B, Shondaland, Hello Sunshine and Robbie for comment.
The sales figures include pre-orders, print sales, e-books and audiobooks; The Woman in Me, released October 24, has been praised by critics as a compelling account of her rise to global fame and her ongoing struggles.
The book includes accounts of the conservatorship that for years granted her father control of much of her life and her revelation that she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake more than 20 years ago.
Shonda Rhimes – whose Shondaland Productions has brought the world smash hits from Grey’s Anatomy to Bridgerton – famously wrote the screenplay for Crossroads, Spears’ 2002 foray into film stardom
Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment is also rumored to be bidding to adapt Spears’ memoirs
Margot Robbie (pictured left) and Reese Witherspoon (pictured right) are among the power players in Hollywood set to bid somewhere in the ‘mid-eight figures’ range for the rights
The latest: Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me has sold 1.1 million copies in the U.S. alone through its first week, according to sales figures
On the day of publication, the Oops!… I Did It Again vocalist posted on Instagram that her book had become ‘the highest selling celebrity memoir in history.’
It is not, so far, even the highest selling memoir of 2023, as Prince Harry‘s memoir Spare, which came out in January, sold 1.6 million U.S. copies in its first week.
The Woman in Me, for which the Toxic artist did little publicity beyond Instagram, was the top seller of last week.
Spears last month told People she was relieved to be able to deliver her account of her her life after years of others doing so.
‘Over the past 15 years or even at the start of my career, I sat back while people spoke about me and told my story for me,’ Spears said. ‘After getting out of my conservatorship, I was finally free to tell my story without consequences from the people in charge of my life.’
The audio edition of The Woman in Me, read by Oscar-nominated actor Michelle Williams, appears a key factor in the book’s initial popularity.
Williams’ reading of The Woman in Me has been highly acclaimed, and according to Gallery, is the fastest selling audio release in the company´s history. The publisher did not immediately announce a specific audio sales figure.
The fourth printing of the memoir is already scheduled, which will escalate the total circulation of hardcover copies to more than 1.4 million, the publisher said.
The singer was pictured in a revealing red gown on Tuesday as she celebrated the success of her bestseller
The singer last week touted the early sales success of her memoir on Instagram
‘The book has been published in 26 languages/territories and is a #1 bestseller with an estimated 2.4 million copies in print globally’ in locations including the U.K., India and Australia, according to the publisher.
Gallery Books senior vice president Jennifer Bergstrom said the memoir ‘has been the subject of intense interest since it was announced and has received outstanding critical acclaim since its publication.
‘It is selling in extraordinary numbers across all editions worldwide, and we expect strong sales to continue throughout the holiday season and beyond. Readers and reviewers have embraced’ the Lucky singer’s ‘candid and powerful memoir in which she is finally able to share her story on her own terms.’
Spears’ memoir helped give a strong boost to streams and sales across her music catalog, according to Luminate, a music and entertainment analytics company.
In one day last week, from Monday to Tuesday, Spears’ catalog jumped 18.2 percent in on-demand streams, and 36.8 percent in album sales.
The numbers continued to climb over the following days. According to Luminate, her U.S. streams increased 24 percent over the previous week – from 16 million to 19.8 million; her album sales were up 61.4 percent and digital sales 49 percent.
According to Circana, which tracks around 85 percent of the print market, The Woman in Me sold just under 418,000 copies, far below first week Circana numbers for former President Barack Obama’s A Promised Land and former first lady Michelle Obama’s Becoming among other memoirs.
No nonfiction release approaches the scale of J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which came out in 2007 and sold more than 8 million copies in its first 24 hours.
