New Details on Tupac Shakur Biopic includes info about Relationships
- wwetvsports21
- Apr 24, 2014
- 4 min read
ALLHIPHOP NEWS EXCLUSIVE interview with Morgan Creek Productions and Emmett/Furla/Oasis Films in association with Open Road Films and Program Pictures. CEO L.T. Hutton has just been released. Here are highlights from the interview:
How much time did you spend with Pac before he died?
I actually spent a ton of time with Pac once he came to Death Row. I followed his career and life even before he came to Death Row. Him and Snoop were close, and I’m originally from the Dogg Pound so when he came to Death Row I got to work with him. We had a lot of stuff stacked in the vault. We rocked out real tough. How far along is the production process of the film at this point? We’re almost all the way there. People want to know what happened, and why did it take so long. Well, Richard Pryor still isn’t made. Marvin Gaye still isn’t made. Some of the greatest biopics of all time still haven’t been made, so that’s a question for Hollywood on why things take so long. It’s a process. At this point, hopefully we’ll be shooting in a few months. We should have a 2015 release date on the film. We’re pretty much ready to go.
Have you begun casting for the film yet?
We’ve been casting throughout this entire process on the 2Pac role, because that is the main role. It’s so hard to find that type of energy, look, and skills. For the other roles that we have, we’ll begin casting probably within a month. You mentioned some of the other roles. There are a few famous woman that have been attached to 2Pac like Jada Pinkett and Kidada Jones. Will that part of his life be addressed in the film? I’m not going to disclose exactly who you’re going to see, but you will see a lot of those women that were in his life. We’re covering a lot of deep intimate moments – different sides you won’t see on the Internet. There’s other women that he talked to after the [1994] shooting. He went to certain people’s houses as soon as he got out of the hospital. You’re going to see a lot of different relationships that he had with various people. Not on a romantic level, just on different types of levels. He had a lot of female friends, so you’ll definitely see some of that stuff.
How is Pac’s complicated relationship with Biggie going to be covered?
People know bits and pieces. I was fortunate enough to be right in the middle of all of it, so I know exactly what happened. It’s going to be covered like you haven’t seen it before. We’re going to dispel some of the myths about it. I don’t want to give it away, but it’s more realistic than Notorious. It’s not a diss. It’s just the truth. We play it exactly how it happened which both of them deserve. It was a little bit different than how they portrayed it in that film. This one is going to be organic to show that these two young black men were truly friends before the nonsense. It’s just a shame what happened, and how something that really could have been resolved, never got resolved. Life is too short for these types of petty beefs. As young black men, we have to be smarter. We give our lives to things that could be worked out. You will get some of those lessons from the story we tell, because it is a tragedy that two young men lost their lives. Not because of the East Coast-West Coast beef, but because of the environment that we lived in at that time.
No one has been prosecuted for Pac’s murder. There’s still a lot of speculation about who was involved in his death. Will the movie explore that topic?
On that topic, I say, “go see the movie.” [laughs] The only thing people know exactly is that Tupac was cut down before his time, and how we deal with that is going to be very exciting.
How involved is Pac’s mother Afeni Shakur in the making of the movie?
She has a huge role. She has approval of a lot of things, and she wants the best portrayal of her son possible. She doesn’t have a problem with any of the truth. She just wants to make sure that everything was told correctly.
Is anyone else from his life directly involved?
Everybody. You put the list out, and there’s really not one person that hasn’t been talked to or involved. It’s a balancing act… one day in 2Pac’s life is a movie. He had so many relationships. Everybody rocked with him. Him, E-40 and Richie Rich’s scenario could be one movie. His relationship with the Outlawz, that’s a movie. His relationship with Kidada, that’s a movie. His relationship with Jada, that’s a movie. All these are individual films have to be cut down to moments to fit into two and a half hours.
What about Dr. Dre and Suge Knight?
I spoke with Dre. We have Dre’s take on it. I talk to Suge every day. This is not a one-sided story. 2Pac had multiple sides, and we would do this movie a disservice if we didn’t have all those sides. You’re going to see the full 360 circumference of Tupac. We’re going deep. We’re going to what made the man, what fueled the man, what was his passion, what burned inside of him to make him go in the studio like that. He was on a timeframe. One thing I noticed about Pac is that he was on a clock. We want the audience to feel that drive and passion, because that’s what separated him from the pack – his passion, his aggression, his knowledge, his strength. One of the problems with other biopics is they never show that passion. They never show what even sparked that motivation. You want to know why people do what they do. What makes them tick. In this film, we’re getting into that.
CHECK OUT TUPAC SHAKUR IN THROWBACKS SECTION
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