The life of legendary American hip-hop artist and rapper Tupac Shakur will be portrayed in an upcoming biographical film scheduled for production later this year.
According to Matt Goldberg of Collider, the untitled Shakur movie will begin filming sometime around June 2015. Producer Randall Emmett provided details on what content will be included in the rapper's biographical film, which will include information from the rapper's mother, Afeni Shakur, who will also be an executive producer on this project.
"That project is being put together for a June start date," Emmett said. "We're still [with] Morgan Creek and co-financing with them. Open Road is our U.S. distributor, still, for domestic. The script is great and we're ready to make the movie. We're just prepping the logistics."
Emmett elaborated on how the movie will be structured. Goldberg noted that the producers will attempt to "honor his memory" while being "real and raw" about his life.
"I think our story, especially like a lot of biopics in the hip-hop space, will at least tease the beginning of his life, kind of tease his beginnings and kind of the people around him, then go into the key years leading up to the pinnacle of his success," Emmett said.
Emmett added that Shakur "paved the way for a lot of the great hip-hop artists we have today." He hoped to effectively portray a no-holds-barred analysis of the rapper's twists and turns in life.
"We want to be real and raw, about the things and the gangster life that he was involved in, growing up in the way that he grew up, but we also want to honor the talent that he had because he really was, in my opinion for sure, one of the greatest talents that ever lived in music and hip-hop," Emmett said.
The film will also attempt to focus on the complicated, if not controversial, parts of Shakur's story. During his time back in the 1990s, there was a music rivalry between hip-hop artists from the East Coast and West Coast of the United States, which occasionally spilled out in a violent manner off stage.
"I don't want to give away the story, but I definitely want to say that when the East Coast/West Coast rivalry was going on, that was definitely during a key part of his life, and I would say that probably some of that is brought up," Emmett said. "Again, we're probably not focusing on that specifically, but it definitely affected him."
Emmett added that the rivalry "affected all hip-hop artists" during that time.
"We had to address it because it was a big thing in the music community at the time, and the way that it's told in our story is we almost set the origin of it, Emmett said. "How did it start? Why did it get to the place it got to?"
According to Tim Appelo of The Hollywood Reporter, John Singleton, who made the film "Poetic Justice" starring Shakur and Janet Jackson, will be involved in the biopic about the hip-hop artist. Singleton first met Shakur at a New York hip-hop club back in 1991 with Queen Latifah.
"He's screening classic films driven by 'singular performances' to prepare for his new film: 'All That Jazz,' 'Scarface,' 'American Gangster,' 'Wolf of Wall Street,' 'Taxi Driver,' Tupac's movies, and F.W. Murnau's box set," Appelo wrote in regards to Singleton's approach.
In addition to developing the biopic on Shakur, he received two Oscar nominations for "Boyz N the Hood" according to The Hollywood Reporter. However, Singleton noted that during his career, he resisted Hollywood executives trying to control him.
"That's why I haven't worked as much as I could've," Singleton said. "I'm gonna be commercial in my way."
Shakur was killed from a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas back in 1996. To date, no one has been prosecuted for his death.
