‘Welcome to Death Row’ Shops Sequel To ‘Straight Outta Compton’
The big-screen reign of early West Coast hip hop biopics may not be over, as talks to bring Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight’s story to the big screen becomes a possible reality with the fledgeling “Welcome to Death Row” project.
It’s not “a wrap” just yet, as movie crews may not be done spending time on the streets of Compton. Coming off of the audience approved “Straight Outta Compton’s” tremendous financial and critical success, THR reports that with the aid of prominent figures familiar to the success of the N.W.A. biopic, APA is shopping a sequel of sorts entitled, “Welcome to Death Row.”
Check out FilmFad.com’s Review of “Straight Outta Compton.”
A package has been constructed to adapt the 2001 book turned documentary by S. Leigh Savage, story contributor and co-executive producer for “Straight Outta Compton.” The film is slated to feature many of the prominent figures involved in the post N.W.A. era.
THR has this to say about the fledgeling sorta sequel project:
While Compton chronicles the rise and breakup of seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A — a span that covers nearly a decade from the late 1980s to 1996 — and features the group’s members Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and the late Eazy-E as the film’s three main protagonists, Welcome to Death Row involves the years after N.W.A formed, one of the most explosive and controversial periods in music history. It’s an era when rappers like Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur forged mega-solo careers and Death Row Records’ Suge Knight reigned as the most powerful and feared hip-hop executive in the business.
Watch the following clip for an insight into Suge Knight’s feared persona, and perhaps a sensitive subject that will (or should) be touched upon in the film.
There is one major hiccup however. No music rights are attached to the project, which not only has the potential to burst the budget, but also complicate the deal amongst the involved parties. The ray of hope is that Savidge, along with co-writer for “Straight Outta Compton” Alan Wenkus, brought in N.W.A’s music rights after the screenplay had already been written. The “Compton” script penning duo managed to convince Tomica Woods-Wright, Eazy-E’s widow as well as guardian of rights, to green-light the project with New Line. The project ended up being snatched up by Universal in 2014.
Check out FilmFad’s interview with “Straight Outta Compton” actor Keith Powers to learn more about the making of the box-office busting biopic.
“Straight Outta Compton” adds yet another badge of success to Universal’s already record breaking year. Totaling over $141 million since the film’s release on August 14th, the $29 million dollar bio-pic has already far surpassed domestic box-office expectations. This year Universal became the first studio to have three films break the $1 Billion mark within a single year, including “Furious 7” ($1.51 billion), “Jurassic World” ($1.63 billion) and the animated feature “Minions” ($1.04 billion).
With F. Gary Gray’s “Compton” testing the waters and stimulating the hip-hop biopic market, Morgan Creek’s Tupac movie is also being seriously discussed, with Carl Franklin already tapped to direct. Similar to the “Compton” story arc with Easy-E, the thug-life biopic would start off in the wake of N.W.A.’s demise and follow the West Coast Hip Hop world from the 1990s up until the the death of Tupac in 1996.
The hope is that just like “Straight Outta Compton,” Universal will pick up the project and surround it with the same capable hands that made the NWA biopic such a whopping success and addition to the annals of historically accurate (from the point of view of N.W.A.) films.
