NWA (In Development)

Ice Cube

• ICE CUBE WANTS NWA STORY TO BE TOLD

It's wellover a year since Ice Cube announced he was planning to produce a biopic of hiserstwhile NWA crew. In the meantime he's turned out for romantic drama New Year's Eve and played the FrankMcRae angry captain role in 21 Jump Street.But Cube has continued to develop StraightOutta Compton, and now John Singleton has revealed he's in talks todirect.

It's anobvious match of material and a director who previously worked with Cube on theepochal Boyz N the Hood. Sincethen the likes of Shaft, Four Brothers and 2 Fast 2 Furious have kept him afloat,and he's recently completed the Taylor Lautner vehicle Abduction, from the hot Black List script by Shawn Christensen.

His Compton involvement isn't set in stone- "I can't talk too prematurely about it," he told The Playlist - buthe does say that "the script is really, really good, so we're figuring itout." He adds that "New Line really wants to make it."

NWA

Last weheard, that script was in the hands of WorldTrade Centre writer Andrea Berloff, but it seems since to have picked upS Leigh Savidge and Alan Wenkus, both of whom are also collaborating on a new Dolemite movie. Savidge made adocumentary about the Death Row label, the post-NWA home of Dr Dre, in2001. Matt Alvarez, Cube's producing cohort from the likes of Barbershop and Are We There Yet?, is also involved.

Cube had anacrimonious split from NWA before pursuing his solo career (he went platinum,bitch, but he didn't have to sell out), and although he's been reconciled withhis former bandmates since the death of Easy E, a Cube-controlled Straight Outta Compton still seemsone-sided. That said, it's early days, so there's no reason to suspect thatDre, DJ Yella and MC Ren won't have some sort of involvement somewhere down theline.