According to Deadline, a five-way bidding war has erupted over a new movie that Ice Cube wants to make. The project—which is just a pitch at this point—is titled Rocky Mountain High, and Ice Cube wants to star in it and produce it himself. The studios fighting over it are Universal, Paramount, MGM, New Line, and Relativity, with Relativity seeming like an easy favorite to win. It produced 22 Jump Street and Ride Along, which were both successful movies that featured Ice Cube. However, Universal is producing Straight Outta Compton, the N.W.A. biopic, so maybe it’s the favorite. We have no idea.
Anyway, the real question is why so many studios want this Ice Cube movie so bad, but the answer to that is pretty simple. Deadline says Rocky Mountain High “has a reasonable budget and could spark a franchise,” which is a phrase that just sounds like the ringing of a few hundred million cash registers to a movie studio. Everybody loves sequels, especially if they’re sequels to something with a “reasonable budget.”
Now, especially astute readers will notice that we’ve come pretty far without actually saying what Rocky Mountain High is about, but that’s because the Deadline article doesn’t say anything about the movie’s plot whatsoever. All we know about it is that Ice Cube wants to make it, it might get sequels, it’s cheap, and every movie studio wants it. For all we know, Rocky Mountain High could be about a high school in Colorado, or it could be about people doing drugs that they bought in Colorado. It could even be a John Denver biopic that stars Ice Cube, which would be incredible. Actually, if that’s what it is, we’d like to join in on this bidding war. We’re willing to offer whatever cash we’ve got in our pockets and an open package of Pumpkin Spice Oreos. Let’s make this happen, Ice Cube!