Tupac Shakur Biopic in the Works; Fuqua at the Helm

By  · Published on June 3rd, 2010

Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Tears of the Sun, Brooklyn’s Finest ) has gotten the greenlight from Morgan Creek Productions to begin work on a Tupac Shakur biopic, according to Digital Spy.

Fuqua states, “It looks like we’re doing Tupac Shakur’s movie next. that’s what I’ve been starting up and working on now. I’ve been working on that for a while with Morgan Creek and Jim Robinson.”

Tupac, the prolific and controversial rapper who called Los Angeles his home, was gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996 during the height of the West Coast – East Coast hip hop rivalry. He was only twenty five when he was murdered, but had already sold seventy five million records worldwide, making Shakur one of the best selling artists in the world. Tupac’s life is certainly ripe and ready for a strong biopic. As a child Tupac wrote poetry, took ballet ((he was the Mouse King in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker), and studied jazz. As an adult, however, he spent much of the nineties in court fighting sexual assault charges, a wrongful death suit, and building animosity among rival rappers which may have ultimately led to his being shot five times in ‘94.

There is certainly no shortage of material to work with.

On casting for Tupac and other supporting roles, Fuqua said, “….I want to discover someone new. I want to discover a lot of new people if I can. Obviously I’m going to have to put some people in it that you know, just because actors have different skills. I want to go to the streets and find him anywhere he might be in the world.”

Work on the biopic begins in September.