The long-delayed Tupac Shakur biopic just received yet another setback with the departure of director Antoine Fuqua, who has bowed out of the film in order to take up with Southpaw. As reported earlier, the drama scripted by Sons Of Anarchy’s Kurt Sutter is something of a spiritual sequel to 8 Mile with similar parallels to Eminem’s career and personal life, in which the rapper stars as a welterweight boxer who’s out to recapture his former glory—you know, by fighting music critic stand-ins and maybe even punching some giant Vicodins, although that’s just our crazy, crazy dream. Anyway, Fuqua’s departure from the Tupac film once again throws the whole project into question, as his participation was key to getting Shakur’s mother to cooperate. “Oh great, so once again Eminem swoops in to take what should have been Tupac’s,” and other narratives that are no doubt being constructed on hip-hop message boards today.
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