Eminem will make his long-awaited return to the big screen as the lead role in the upcoming boxing film Southpaw, and word is spreading that Antoine Fuqua, who directed Training Day and Brooklyn’s Finest, is in final talks to direct the film.
Southpaw has already been picked up by DreamWorks, and will find the rapper stepping into the role of a welterweight boxer whose career is derailed by personal tragedy. Kurt Sutter, the film’s screenwriter and creator of FX’s popular drama “Sons of Anarchy,” said that the film carries a metaphorical relevance to rapper’s own much-publicized trials and tribulations
“I took meetings with Marshall’s producing partners over the past seven years, looking for something to do together,” he told MTV. “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 [Recovery], 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.”
Sutter also added that, “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.”
Fuqua had been attached to direct the upcoming Tupac Shakur biopic, but he has withdrawn his attachment to the film in order to focus on Southpaw.
