Though I used to listen to a fair amount of hip hop back in the day, I was never fanatical enough to get caught up in the whole East Coast vs West Coast beef of the 90’s. Using the word “beef” in that sentence is probably the full extent of my hip-hop street cred. As such, while I was about as “shocked” as most people at the time about the murders of both Tupac Shakur and Chris “Biggie Smalls” Wallace – the de facto voices of the two respective hip-hop factions, I never really kept up to date with the fallout other than pointing out conspiratorially that Tupac seemed to release more albums after his death than when he was alive (doffs tinfoil hat).
Apparently though, there’s quite the story to tell – and I’m not just talking about the other hip-hop artists who then took it upon themselves to go to war both musically and in the streets – as investigations into the two hip-hop stars’ murders uncovered a whole other can of worms. And according to ScreenDaily, Johnny Depp is going to tell us all about it Labyrinth.
Directed by Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer, Infiltrator) and based on Randall Sullivan’s book of the same name, Labyrinth will see Depp as “Russell Poole, the late LA detective who the towards the end of the 1990s investigated the unsolved assassinations of hip-hop icons Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. Poole encountered endless dead ends, yet his dogged legwork uncovered corruption in the LAPD that rocked the institution to its core”.
That actually sounds like a pretty intriguing premise. The only question I have is how they’re going to tweak the script to allow Johnny Depp to wear some crazy makeup and over the top headgear. I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s in his contract somewhere, right? Jokes aside, Depp reminded us last year with Black Mass that he’s still an incredibly talented actor who can do more than just like a buffoon on a pirate ship or in the old west.
There’s no other casting for the movie yet, and it hasn’t even been picked up for distribution yet, but Depp and Furman are apparently ready to start shooting and are hoping to sell the movie to distributors at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival.
Last Updated: September 9, 2016
