"I hope he speaks to me. He's known to get mad at me, [but] he'll win another award. I don't feel bad."
Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesMadonna did not switch the name of her latest single to thwart legal action from Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, her representative, Liz Rosenberg, tells The Hollywood Reporter.
The Material Mom debuted the track “Girl Gone Wild” — originally dubbed “Girls Gone Wild,” similar to Francis’ franchise — on Monday as part of the lead-up to her upcoming album, MDNA, which drops March 26. Francis had previously threatened a lawsuit if Madonna performed the song during the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show. (She sang the record’s first single, “Give Me All Your Luvin,” with Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. as planned.)
VIDEO: Madonna’s “Girl Gone Wild”
Rosenberg said Francis’ claims that Madonna dropped the “s” from the song to avoid a legal dispute were “not accurate.”
Her longtime manager, Guy Oseary, told TMZ that the singer has been putting the finishing touches on MDNA in the past weeks, and the name change reflects the song’s singular “girl” lyrics. And in another dig at Francis, Oseary claimed that Madonna has no idea who he is, nor did she receive his cease-and-desist letter demanding she not perform the song at the Super Bowl.
Francis, meanwhile, lost his five-year battle with Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn earlier this month. He was ordered to pay Wynn a sum of $7.5 million in a defamation case for threatening to expose the ways in which Wynn “deceives his high-end customers.”
