Studio buys movie rights to Notorious B.I.G. story
Wed Jul 20, 4:31 PM ET Fox Searchlight Pictures on Wednesday said it has bought the rights to make a film about the life of slain rapper Christopher Wallace, better known as Notorious B.I.G. Fox Searchlight, a unit of News Corp Inc-owned Fox Entertainment Group, said the film will be produced by Voletta Wallace, the mother of the rapper, Wayne Barrow and Mark Sitts, his former music managers. Notorious B.I.G. rose from the streets of Brooklyn to become one of the most influential hip-hop artists of the 1990s. In a killing widely attributed to a long-running feud between East and West Coast record labels, Wallace was gunned down in 1997 in Los Angeles, six months after Tupac Shakur, another leading rapper, was shot dead in Las Vegas. The Wallace family has claimed that former Los Angeles police officer David Mack, now in prison for robbery, arranged for a college friend to shoot Wallace. The family said Mack was tied to Shakur's music label, Death Row Records, and that Wallace, signed to rival Bad Boy Entertainment, was killed in retaliation for Shakur's death. Earlier this month, Wallace's relatives vowed to renew a wrongful-death suit against the city of Los Angeles after a U.S. judge declared a mistrial in the case and accused police of concealing evidence. Wallace's relatives have said they brought their suit to shed light on the rap star's unsolved murder. A lawyer for the city has denounced the family's theory as based on unreliable witnesses and evidence. Antoine Fuqua, who directed "Training Day," "King Arthur" and "Tears of the Sun," is in negotiations to direct the film, while Cheo Hodari Coker will write the screenplay. Coker, a former journalist, was the last person to interview Wallace before his death, according to Fox. Coker also wrote a biography entitled, "Unbelievable: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G." Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. "If you could make a difference, what would you do?"...Said Kakese Dibinga __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scifinoir2/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
