Mamma Mia! is a musical based on the hit songs of ABBA. The film uses most of ABBA's hits from the '70s and '80s and clubs them with the situational developments of the story.

Donna (Meryl Streep) and her 21-year-old daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) live in a Greek island named Kalokairi, where Donna runs a hotel called Villa Donna. Sophie wants to marry Sky (Dominic Cooper) and wants her father to be present to 'give her away’. But she does not know who her father is.

She reads through Donna's diary and learns of three men she was seeing 20 years ago. Sophie concludes one out of Sam Carmichael (Pierce Brosnan), Harry Bright (Colin Firth) and Bill Anderson (Stellan Skarsgard) is her father. Without telling her mother and fiancé, Sophie mails invitations to all three in hope of finding out which is her father.

Things go cynical when Donna comes to know of the three men being in her own house. It sends Donna in a dilemma and affects her preparations for the wedding.

Director
Phyllida lloyd

“Mamma Mia! is an adaptation of our West-End stage musical, based on the songs of ABBA. The film also has additional music composed by ABBA member Benny Andersson. Adapting Mamma Mia! had an advantage as unlike a lot of other stage musicals we already had a location; we had Greece. A lot of stage shows have a lot more difficulty finding a life on screen.

I wanted to shoot each ABBA song according to its needs and to make them powerful and individual. The idea was about releasing the bigger emotions, like, when Meryl (Streep) sang Winner Takes It All and the camera watched every intricate detail of her performance. End of the day, it turned out to be a massive experience.