East Coaster Antoine Fuqua hopes to spread some California Love with his next project, a biopic of legendary slain rapper Tupac Shakur, says the Playlist. Though the 44-year-old filmmaker has numerous projects in development, including the action thriller Consent To Kill and the recently rumored reunion with his Tears of the Sun star Bruce Willis (that film, titled The Tomb, has been declared by Fuqua nothing more than “a conversation I’ve been having with Bruce”), Shakur will come first.
Fuqua told Digital Spy that “we’re doing Tupac Shakur’s movie next in September, that’s what I’ve been starting up and working on now with Morgan Creek and Jim Robinson. I just got the greenlight from him and we’re going in September. I’ve just started to prep that.”
Moviegoers have become quite familiar with rappers at the multiplex over the last twenty years, both as the subject of and stars in films like Ricochet, New Jack City, Boyz N The Hood, Bad Boys, 8 Mile and Hustle and Flow. Most recently, Anthony Mackie portrayed Shakur in George Tillman’s Notorious, a flavorful chronicle of the life and death of the late Christopher Wallace a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G. In that 2009 flick, local New York wordsmith Jamal Woolard channeled Wallace, shocking critics and pleasing fans of the fallen platinum-selling recording artist. Fuqua notes that he, too, may look to discover a new talent in his upcoming film.
Expect to hear more on this developing project over the summer, but in the meantime, take it back to the Summer of 1996 with one of Pac’s most celebrated (and cinematic) music videos of all time, inspired by Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome:
