Eminem will star in the upcoming boxing film Southpaw, which was announced in December 2010, and is currently set for a 2013 release according to IMDB. "Sons of Anarchy" creator and producer Kurt Sutter will write the movie, and now it is being reported that Antoine Fuqua will direct, who directed Training Day and is now turning down the chance to direct a Tupac Shakur biopic to focus on this project.
Here's what Sutter said about the movie:
"I took meetings with Marshall's producing partners over the past 7 years, looking for something to do together," Sutter told me. "I know he's very selective and doesn't do a lot. But he shared so much of his personal struggle in this raw and very honest album, one that I connected with on a lot of levels. He is very interested in the boxing genre, and it seemed like an apt metaphor, because his own life has been a brawl. In a way, this is a continuation of the 8 Mile story, but rather than a literal biography, we are doing a metaphorical narrative of the second chapter of his life. He'll play a world champion boxer who really hits a hard bottom, and has to fight to win back his life for his young daughter. At its core, this is a retelling of his struggles over the last five years of his life, using the boxing analogy. I love that the title refers to Marshall being a lefty, which is to boxing what a white rapper is to hip hop; dangerous, unwanted and completely unorthodox. It's a much harder road for a southpaw than a right handed boxer."
I can't say I'm the world's biggest Eminem fan, or that his ability to act like himself in 8 Mile was really all that amazing to me, but I am at the very least cautiously optimistic about this idea. Eminem has done some training with Emanuel Steward and hopefully can play a convincing fighter thanks to that. Attitudinally, he seems a solid fit to play a dramatized boxer.