China beats Hollywood by producing Tupac Shakur biopic

Until the End of Time centres on a Chinese student who meets up with an ex-girlfriend of the rapper for a project on American civil rights history
Tupac Shakur
 Thug life after death ... The real Tupac Shakur. Photograph: Chi Modu
The success of the hip-hop biopic Straight Outta Compton at the US box office this summer has reignited hopes that a film based on the life of the late rapper Tupac Shakur could finally get the greenlight. Now it’s emerged that Hollywood has been beaten to the punch by a little-known Chinese film-maker named Steven Sheng, with the distinctly unauthorised Tupac-themed movie Until the End of Time.

The trailer intersperses scenes in which actor Dean Xue, as the student, discusses his project with Tupac’s rather young-looking “ex-girlfriend” in China, with mock flashback scenes featuring Baptiste as the rapper.Complex Magazine reports that the film has been banned from social media by Chinese authorities, but Baptiste himself has been enthusiastically promoting the movie via Facebook.A trailer for the new film, which features American actor Tsalta Baptiste as Tupac, has hit the web. According to Maxim the bizarre-looking movie is set for a first-run release at Chinese film festivals early next year. The plot centres on a young hip-hop influenced college student in China who is asked by his professor to research American civil rights and activism. “In choosing renaissance man Tupac Shakur, he finds himself learning more than expected,” reads the film’s blurb. “After meeting a former girlfriend of Mr Shakur in China, things take a turn from just another class project to a life changing event.”
Boyz N the Hood director John Singleton was at one point lined up to direct a Tupac biopic but walked away in April claiming the film’s producers had shown a lack of respect for the rapper, who was murdered in 1996. Singleton was replaced by Carl Franklin, the director of Devil in a Blue Dress, Out of Time and recent episodes of Homeland and House of Cards, but little has been heard of the film in the intervening months.
Actor Marcc Rose, who played Shakur in Straight Outta Compton, said in Augustthat he and Singleton are currently in talks to bring their own Tupac biopic to life. F Gary Gray’s biopic of the pioneering LA hip-hop group NWA has reignited interest in rap movies after pulling in more than $200m (£133m) on a budget of just $28m this summer.
Guardian UK

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