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Universal has enlisted Black Panther: Wakanda Forever co-writer Joe Robert Cole and director Allen Hughes, who with his brother Albert directed movies such as Menace II Society and Dead Presidents, to tackle a definitive biopic of the influential, iconic rapper and entertainment mogul Snoop Dogg.
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Snoop is heavily involved with the project announced Wednesday, which will incorporate music from his cast catalog. He is also producing the feature along with Sara Ramaker and Hughes. The project will mark the inaugural film from Snoop’s Death Row Pictures which he runs with Ramaker.
“I waited a long time to put this project together because I wanted to choose the right director, the perfect writer, and the greatest movie company I could partner with that could understand the legacy that I’m trying to portray on screen, and the memory I’m trying to leave behind,” said Snoop in a statement. “It was the perfect marriage. It was holy matrimony, not holy macaroni.”
Snoop, whose real name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., shot to fame in the early 1990s West Coast rap scene thanks to his collaborations with Dr. Dre and then his one-two-punch albums, Doggystyle and The Doggfather. He parlayed that into a media and business empire, becoming an actor, DJ and media personality as well as an entrepreneur with ties to technology, global consumer brands, food and beverage industries, and of course, the cannabis world.
With 35 million albums worldwide, he is a 17-time Grammy nominee, an American Music Award winner, and a Primetime Emmy Award winner. He has played himself in countless series and appeared in movies such as Training Day, Starsky & Hutch and this summer’s Jamie Foxx vampire action movie Day Shift.
“Snoop Dogg’s life and legacy makes him one of the most exciting and influential icons in popular culture,” stated Donna Langley, chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group. “We met with Snoop shortly after he acquired Death Row Records and had the opportunity to hear his story in his own words. We are humbled to be able to create the lasting document of this singular artist.”
Universal has had previous success tapping into rap culture with musical biopics focusing on key artists. In 2015, it released Straight Outta Compton, centered on the West Coast hip-hop scene and N.W.A, the seminal group that Dr. Dre was a part of. The film grossed over $200 million and earned an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. With 2002’s 8 Mile, it told a thinly-veiled autobiographical story of Eminem and his rise into an industry and genre dominated by Black artists. That movie grossed over $250 million and won the Oscar for best original song with “Lose Yourself.”
With the Snoop biopic in development, Universal will now have a trifecta of the artists — Snoop, Dr. Dre, and Eminem — who performed during this year’s Super Bowl halftime show.
Hughes and his brother, both born in Detroit and grew up in Southern California, made their names by telling stories of the Black experience with Menace and Dead Presidents at the same time as Snoop was making his rise. In 2017, he tackled the music scene by directing The Defiant Ones, the award-winning four-part HBO documentary focused on Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine.
“Snoop Dogg is one of the most internationally beloved figures in hip-hop,” states Hughes. “There’s just something about his energy that brings people of all walks of life together. Snoop Dogg, not just the artist, but the man and his brand, has transcended generations with his connection and appeal to audiences. His story is so authentic and utterly inspiring, and to have the opportunity to tell his story allows me to go back to the hood 30 years after Menace II Society, and say more now than I could then.”
Cole is a generation younger than Snoop and Hughes and grew up influenced by their work as he made his mark as a screenwriter. He’s notably worked with Ryan Coogler on the two Black Panther movies as well as a writer-producer on the Emmy-winning FX series American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson, for which he received an Emmy nomination for writing the episode “The Race Card.”
“I’ve been a fan of Snoop since ‘Deep Cover,’” says Cole. “His music and the films of Allen Hughes have left an indelible mark on me over my life. What excites me most is the humanity of Snoop’s journey to international icon. Universal has proven they can guide a movie like this to something special. I’m proud to be a part of the team.”
NBCUniversal’s president of music and publishing, Mike Knobloch, will supervise the project’s music. Universal’s senior vp of production and development Ryan Jones will oversee the project for the studio.
Snoop is repped by Stephen Barnes of Morris Yorn. Hughes is repped by WME and Hansen, Jacobson while Cole is repped by Circle of Confusion and Jackoway Austen.
This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.
Bruce Springsteen is coming to a television near you. On Wednesday (Nov. 9), NBC announced that The Boss will be heading to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon starting next week for a full-blown takeover, which will see him performing several tracks from his forthcoming album, Only the Strong Survive.
Springsteen’s takeover will begin on the Nov. 14 episode of Fallon, and will continue through Nov. 15 and Nov. 16, in addition to the special Thanksgiving episode on Nov. 24. During his time on the show, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer will accompany Fallon as a guest and deliver the live television debut of four tracks from Only the Strong Survive.
While Springsteen’s appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon marks his third time on the show as a guest, the takeover will be his first, in addition to his first time performing on the television program.
Only the Strong Survive — a covers album of R&B and soul songs — is set to be released on Nov. 11. The 15-track LP features a guest spot from Sam Moore on tracks “Soul Days” and “I Forgot to Be Your Lover,” the latter originally written by William Bell and Booker T. Jones. (Billy Idol‘s version of the track, which appeared on his 1986 album Whiplash Smile, peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100.) Only the Strong Survive also features singles “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” (Frank Wilson), “Nightshift” (Commodores) and “Don’t Play That Song” (Ben E. King).
Springsteen follows a roster of celebrities to takeover Fallon in recent months, including Mariah Carey, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Taylor Swift and more.
With a little over a month left until its arrival in theaters, the second trailer for the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody arrived on Wednesday (Nov. 9). The trailer features Naomi Ackie as the “I Have Nothing” singer responding to critics of her music being too genre bending, as well as singing the national anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl and getting into a heated spat with Houston’s father, John Russell Houston (Clarke Peters).
The trailer starts off with Houston sitting down for an interview with a radio host, who tells her, “A common criticism of you, your music isn’t Black enough.”
“Who said that? That’s just bull. And it makes me angry actually because it’s hateful and uninformed. My whole life: ‘She ain’t Black enough, she ain’t white enough.’ Well how ’bout ‘She’s not obedient enough’? How ’bout ‘She ain’t fearful enough’?” she replies.
In between scenes from her life and performing at the Super Bowl, she continues, “Music is not a color to me. It has no boundaries. I sing what I wanna sing, be how I wanna be, and reach as big an audience as I can.”
Houston then butts heads with her father over her finances. “Whitney, you’re Daddy’s princess. We’re building something here, so you just keep singing,” advises John Houston (played by Clarke Peters).
The father-daughter pair face off, with the singer fiercely declaring, “Daddy … my money. I trusted you. You were meant to look out for me,” as Houston’s hit single “I Will Always Love You” plays in the background.
Slated to arrive in theaters Dec. 21, I Wanna Dance With Somebody was directed by Kasi Lemmons and written by Bohemian Rhapsody’s Anthony McCarten. Clive Davis, now 90 years old, is portrayed by Stanley Tucci, and served as a producer on the film.
Watch the new trailer for I Wanna Dance With Somebody above.
A certain television icon is pleading guilty on all charges of frightening Justin Bieber. In a Monday (Nov. 7) interview with Access Hollywood, Judge Judy Sheindlin said that the 28-year-old pop star, who used to be her neighbor, once avoided her at all costs following a few scathing comments she made about him several years ago.
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While promoting her Amazon Prime show Judy Justice, the 80-year-old former prosecutor had a good laugh while talking about where she stands with the celebrity she once shared a corner of California with. “He’s scared to death of me,” she said.
The Judge Judy star went on to recall how Bieber acted after she told CBS Los Angeles in 2014 that the “Peaches” singer was “doing a very good job of making a fool out of himself.”
“It was a period of time before he grew up, when he was foolish and doing foolish things,” she remembered. “I must have said something about it, and then I understood that he was paying the front door people to let them know when I was there coming and going so he wouldn’t have to bump into me.”
Sheindlin’s 2014 comments on Bieber’s behavior followed a handful of controversies involving the pop star. A couple months beforehand, he had been charged with assaulting a limo driver (the charge was later dropped), and in January 2014, police searched his home after he allegedly egged a neighbor’s house. He was also arrested that month on charges of driving under the influence, resisting arrest and driving with a suspended license. Seven years after the incident, Bieber opened up about that time in his life. “Not proud of where I was at in my life. I was hurting, unhappy, confused, angry, mislead, misunderstood and angry at god.. I also wore too much leather for someone in Miami. All this to say God has brought me a long way,” he wrote on Instagram in 2021.
“Nobody’s going to remember that he was a marginal singer,” Sheindlin had also said of her then-neighbor at the time. “But they’re going to remember a young kid who had a chance to have it all and who is blowing it by acting like a fool.”
During its time on air, Glee had a slew of superstar guest appearances by people like Britney Spears, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Hudson, Idina Menzel, Kristin Chenoweth, Neil Patrick Harris and more.
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Turns out, one icon who was also supposed to appear on the show was Whitney Houston. In a new episode of Glee stars Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz’s podcast And That’s What You Really Missed, the duo shared a conversation they had with the popular series’ creator, Ryan Murphy.
Murphy revealed that Houston initially agreed in 2009 to play the part of Grace Hitchens — a choir director at a school for female juvenile delinquents — over the phone. The season one role ended up going to Eve. “She just loved that it was about kids in choir, and she was like ‘This is phenomenal. Like, that you’re doing a show about show choir,’” he recalled of Houston’s enthusiasm for the role.
“She didn’t end up doing it, and Eve was phenomenal,” Murphy continued, noting that he didn’t think Houston “was in the right place and time” to play the role. Houston died just a few years later in 2012.
In a new Billboard cover story, Houston’s longtime manager and sister-in-law Pat discussed a string of events that aim to put the public image surrounding Whitney focused back on her voice and not the tabloid drama. Earlier this year, Pat and music publisher and marketer Primary Wave announced a partnership giving the company a 50% stake in Whitney’s assets and since then, Primary Wave says it has quadrupled the estate’s fortunes.
“With everything that’s going on right now, she’s still touching lives, and that’s what I want to do in a very positive way,” Pat told Billboard. “She should be remembered by her music and the work that she’s done in the community, not by her relationships. And the fact that all these things are happening proves that. It’s a clear path without any distractions to make things continue to happen for her legacy.”
Listen to the full conversation with Murphy and more on the latest episode of McHale and Ushkowitz’s And That’s What You Really Missed podcast below. Listen to more episodes here.
If there’s a short list of actresses who might play Britney Spears in a biopic someday, Millie Bobby Brown wants on it. In a Monday (Nov. 7) interview on The Drew Barrymore show, the 18-year-old actress confessed that her dream role is none other than the “Toxic” singer.
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“I want to play a real person,” she told Barrymore, who’d asked what was on the Enola Holmes star’s career bucket list. “I think for me … Britney, it would be Britney Spears.”
Brown was first launched into superstardom in 2016 when she debuted as fan-favorite character Eleven on Stranger Things, which is easily one of Netflix’s most successful original shows to date. That means she became internationally famous at just 12 years old, an experience she thinks would help inform her potential portrayal of Spears, who herself was just a teenager when debut single “Baby One More Time” blew up.
“I think her story, first of all, resonates with me,” the Emmy nominee told Barrymore, who is, of course, also familiar with the reality of being a child star. “Growing up in the public eye, watching her videos, watching interviews of her when she was young.”
“I mean, same thing with you, I see the scramble for words,” added Brown. “And I don’t know her, but when I look at pictures of her, I feel like I could tell her story in the right way — and hers only.”
If a Britney biopic doesn’t pan out, though, there is another pop star who’d love to be portrayed by the Godzilla actress. Earlier this year, Halsey gave MBB her stamp of approval during an appearance on The Tonight Show after Fallon pointed out how similar the two of them look.
“Millie would be great,” the “Without Me” singer said. “But I don’t really think I’m famous enough to cast Millie … It’s kind of uncanny how much we look alike. It’s like, ‘Oh no, we actually just look like sisters.’”
And while Halsey may not think they’re famous enough to book Brown, the Florence by Mills founder doesn’t seem to agree. Posting a clip of the Fallon interview on her Instagram story, she simply wrote: “Sooooo down.”
Man! Shania Twain is still in disbelief that her signature hit, “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!,” took the top spot on Billboard‘s 100 Greatest Karaoke Songs of All Time list, so much so that on her Tuesday (Nov. 8) appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show, she had to share a few more thoughts on earning the honor.
Hudson asked the country singer how it feels to crown the list, to which Twain replied, “I think that is so cool. Certainly I would never have imagined that, that I would ever have the best karaoke song in the world, but I enjoy the compliment and I can just imagine … every person in the world can sing that song with an exclamation mark. It’s just a statement, kind of feel-good song.”
Twain shared her initial reaction about being No. 1 on the Billboard list — in which she beat out hits from Billy Joel, Destiny’s Child, The Killers, Cher, Queen, Carrie Underwood and more — following its publication in October.
“I think @billboard just crowned me the Queen of Karaoke?!” Twain tweeted on Oct. 6 along with surprised and crying-laughing emoji. “Seriously though, it’s really really cool to see the life that ‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman!’ has taken on and I’m just obsessed with you all…,” Twain added.
“Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” charted on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1999. The song went on to spend 28 weeks on the all-genre chart and peaked at No. 23.
Watch Twain talk about “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” topping Billboard‘s list above.
As of right now, Taylor Swift isn’t going to be making a cameo in the next Deadpool movie — but never say never. Ryan Reynolds, who stars in the franchise’s titular role, gushed about the pop star in a Tuesday (Nov. 8) interview and said that the door is always open for her to join the cast.
“Are you kidding me?” the actor told Entertainment Tonight at a red carpet event for his new film Spirited when asked whether he’d consider casting Swift. “I would do anything for that woman. She’s a genius.”
Reynolds and Blake Lively, his wife and fellow Hollywood superstar, have been friends with the 11-time Grammy winner for years. Swift famously included each of the names of the couple’s three daughters — James, Inez and Betty — in her Folklore single “Betty,” and featured an audio clip of James’ voice in her Reputation track “Gorgeous.”
Last year, the “Anti-Hero” singer even went trick-or-treating with the Reynolds-Lively clan dressed up as a squirrel. And in 2016, she borrowed Reynolds’ actual Deadpool suit for her Halloween costume.
With Swift being such a close family friend, it’s basically a given that the Free Guy star, Lively and their three children (soon to be four!) are loving Midnights just as much as the rest of the world. Reynolds told ET that they’re “obsessed” with Swift’s newest record, which has sold nearly 2 million album units and has set unprecedented chart records since dropping Oct. 21.
“Oh my God, yes,” Reynolds said. “All of us, whole house, I’m not kidding. I love it so much. I do, Blake does, my daughters. We love it. Obsessed.”
He’d also spoken about his family’s love for Swift with SiriusXM’s Jess Cagle a day prior, confessing that he’d be joining Lively and the kids for a “Midnights dance party” on the porch right after the interview concluded. “That’s like a religion in our house,” he shared.
“I think what’s most exciting for them is that for the longest time, they just thought Taylor’s like an aunt, like a friend of Mommy and Daddy that’s very, very close, almost family,” Reynolds added. “And then they went to a concert one day and were like, ‘Oh, oh this isn’t a hobby.’”
Check out Ryan Reynolds’ SiriusXM interview below.
Gwen Stefani has made some solid choices in season 22 of NBC’s The Voice, and on Monday night (Nov. 7), she had some tough choices to make.
One of those solid choices is Justin Aaron, who impressed with a performance of “Glory” by Common and John Legend. Aaron, a paraeducator from Junction City, Kansas, lifted the spirts once again during the Battles, when he faced off against Destiny Leigh with a rendition of Mary J. Blige’s “No More Drama.”
The competitors are now at the Knockouts stage. As the name suggests, there are no second chances.
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Aaron went up against fellow Team Gwen performers Cara Brindisi and Kayla von der Heide, for what panned out to be an impressive round. And a tough choice for Gwen.
“I’m so emotional right now, we had so much fun together,” she explained, stifling tears. “Just to be able to share and to, like, watch you grow, is just so unbelievably fulfilling to me,” she added. “I’m just proud, can you tell I’m proud right now.”
There could be only one, and it was Aaron who progressed to the Live rounds.
When Aaron performed for Stefani during rehearsals, she explained, “I was like, ‘there was no swag. And it was, like, 10 times flirtier on this stage right now. It was so good.”
What he’s got, it’s a “gift,” she remarked, and he took it to “another level.”
There’s so much more to come, the former No Doubt singer reckons. “He doesn’t fully realize how gifted he is. He’s so coachable. There’s no way that America’s not going to fall in love with him. We’re just getting started.”
Watch below.
Throughout the course of what’s become a legendary career, Danny Elfman has cultivated a reputation as a singular composer who decidedly doesn’t shy away from the fantastical and eccentric. From his long partnership with Tim Burton (Batman and The Nightmare Before Christmas among them) to recent projects ranging from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to Justice League, Elfman’s filmography is a case study in creative experimentation.
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It’s a vibrant legacy that continues with the upcoming release of White Noise, director Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s cult classic 1985 novel, which explores themes of consumerism and hysteria. Starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, the movie marks Elfman’s first collaboration with Baumbach, with the acclaimed director fully embracing Elfman’s penchant for the sonically adventurous. “Noah has a sense of, ‘Let’s get in the playground,’” Elfman tells Billboard. “It becomes a wonderful creative process.”
Ahead of the film’s Nov. 25 theatrical release, followed by its Netflix premiere Dec. 30, Billboard caught up with Elfman to discuss creating a soundscape for the project with Baumbach’s guidance.
White Noise is a very unique film. What made you say yes to collaborating with Noah on this project, and what makes you say yes to prospective projects in general?
First off, it was like “Can Noah Baumbach call you? He’s interested in talking about his new film.” So automatically, there’s a factor of “yes, I’d love to engage in that conversation,” even if I didn’t know what the movie is. Frequently when I say yes to a project it’s about the filmmaker; if it’s one I admire, I’m happy and excited to even find out what it is they’re working on. So Noah is a smart and interesting filmmaker, and adapting White Noise sounded like a hard, interesting project that I’d love to see how he’d tackle.
The first thing I did was read the script, and then I read the book. I was so excited because it was completely obvious to me that it was one of those projects that come along every now and then where there’s no genre to indicate what type of music it should be. When I started out as a film composer doing these films for Tim Burton like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, Batman and The Nightmare Before Christmas, all of these films were virtually without a template with absolutely nothing to say as to what type of score it should be. I didn’t realize until later how lucky I was for that.
I would think that would make it harder for a composer. When you have a blank page and are given no guidance, isn’t that more difficult than when you have a certain direction to go in?
No, it’s the opposite. When there’s no clear idea of how it’d sound, that’s when it’s most exciting. If there’s a clear idea of the genre, it’s much harder work to work on something where [the director] is set on a certain type of music while at the same time giving it a personal identity of my own. A clean slate is what I love.
Have there been moments in your career where a director says “I need this kind of sound” but you’re hearing something else? How do you compromise between the two?
That’s the tricky navigation that every composer faces all the time. It’s a delicate dance of presenting your music and options and trying to gear the director’s brain away from this target and over to this one. There’s no magic way to do that; you do it with just presenting lots of options and ideas. You look at what can work for the film and [directors] start to go “Oh yeah,” and you lull them over to a slightly different direction veering off from whatever they’ve been focused on. Any composer with a vast repertory behind them has done it many, many times. Some directors are really just locked into something and it’s incredibly hard to move them off, and some aren’t. Even Tim Burton, who I’ve worked with so many times, it takes awhile to pull him into where I’m recommending where we go with a score.
So then how did you construct White Noise’s soundscape from the ground up?
Noah started throwing me all of the challenges immediately, by our second phone call even before I saw any footage. He’d say, “What would it sound like if you combined Aaron Copland with edgy Giorgio Moroder ’80s-based synthesizer?” Even though I was working on other stuff at the time, I’d hang up the call and couldn’t focus on anything else because the challenge was so enticing to me that I couldn’t help it. It makes the challenges become a bit of an odyssey. “Can you do that? Can you combine this and this and this?” I love that; for me that’s just fun, it’s not even work. That evolved slowly into the tonal basis of what we’re working on with the score. On one hand, we go from a noir-based ’80s-influenced sound, to the other side being really theatrical and classically based, and a third side over the Babbette character [played by Greta Gerwig], which is very simple and minimalist; straightforward with no winking at the audience. Tying them all together was my final challenge.
You have a few directors you frequently collaborate with, but I assume that working with someone for the first time can be a risk because you really don’t know how you’ll jell creatively and with the process. Do you have a specific way of working or do you go with the flow?
Honestly, I have no way of working other than first being as fluid as I possibly can, and by fluid I mean to try to keep my mind open from going in very different directions. When I start a score, there’s lots of experimentation; like, I’m just going to try this and it’ll probably get laughed at or thrown out, but why not?
But like you said, it’s always a risk. On one hand, I love starting a project with a new director because I love risks. Occasionally you find yourself up against a brick wall like, “I can get through this but I don’t want to repeat this experience.” Noah, similar to Gus Van Sant, is open to trying all kinds of different things. In fact, Gus pushes me by saying, “That works really well, now do something really different.” Noah is different but has a similar sense of, “Let’s get in the playground,” and it becomes a wonderful creative process.
What does experimentation look like for you? Are you at a guitar, piano or software like Pro Tools?
I’m at a keyboard, and on there I have a template which has a full orchestral range of sounds, as well as a full range of synthetic sounds, and my own personal percussion instruments, as well as sounds I’ve squeezed out of things like broken pianos. So I’ll start to play around. For White Noise, I was thinking purely synthesizer-based, so I was programming and programming and coming up with sounds I thought were really fun and cool. Other moments I’d think it’d be just strings, piano and a solo clarinet.
You’ve said “Composers lose themselves in a film they’re working on.” How does that happen for you?
To me, it’s a different version of what happens to an actor. When they take on a part, they hope to lose themselves in the role and get lost in the story to become part of it. As a composer, we frequently hope to do the same thing; just lose ourselves in the feel and the tone, rhythm and pace of the movie. If you do that, every part of it ceases to become a struggle; you just embrace it and flow with where it’s going. I’m not going to plan out where each scene goes; I want to get pulled along and often I don’t even block out where I’m going each 10, 15, 20 seconds. If it takes a turn, then I’ll turn with it. Just like an actor who understands their character and is not trying to find it constantly.
