Eminem To Star In RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE
Eminem had a great 2010 and is looking to have an even better 2011!. His album, Recovery was was Billboard's biggest-selling album and now the rapper is headed back to tinsel town with a new film in development.
He is set to star in a new crime thriller called Random Acts of Violence for 20th Century Fox. Vulture has reported that Paul Rosenberg and Stuart Parr of Eminem’s Shady Films (producers of 8 Mile and Get Rich or Die Tryin') will be prouduching his new film Acts of Violence.
The story is basically a film adaptation of Grand Theft Auto. The film rights were owned by Rockstar games a few years back and it decided it was not financially viable for them to sell to Fox risking the GTA game franchise. It was said that even as a first-dollar gross participant in an adaptation, Rockstar stood to make only a small percentage of the film's grosses for licensing GTA.
Fox still interested in making Random with a plot very clost to that of GTA. In 2008 the draft of the script was about an ex-con named Emile trying to save his failing repo business and pay for his uncle's botched coke deal by stealing a string of sports cars. Fox passed on the script because it read too much like a video game.
Writer-director David Von Ancken (Californication and Seraphim Falls) has since changed the script by adding grit and realism used in 8 Mile. The current script for the thriller is more like The Town or The Departed. The story now follows "an ex-con smarter than his past is fresh out of prison and trying to stay legit — but his efforts are complicated by his old gang, who want him back on the job. So, too, does the FBI, which hopes he’ll wear a wire and bring down the crime syndicate. The ex-con, meanwhile, tries to play both sides against each other long enough to exact revenge against those — on both sides of the law — who sent him to prison in the first place."
The script is reported be undergoing one last draft with another writer while Von Ancken is off directing his TV show. Fox is expected to bring Von Ancken back to direct later this year.
Random sounds like an interesting film and I loved both The Town and The Departed so those are nice comparisons to have made. I look forward to seeing Eminem on the big screen again, what are your thoughts?