It’s apparently the second biggest selling book ever written by a black man (after Alex Haley’s Roots), and now a new bid has been launched to bring the autobiography, Pimp: The Story Of My Life, to the big screen.
The Hollywood Reporter has let it be know that a group of movie producers, incuding Entourage’s Rob Wiss, have aquired the screen rights to the five million sellling book, with an eye to bringing it to the big screen.
Pimp tells the true story of Robert Beck, who was born into poverty, but with a prodigous intellect made it university for a bit before dropping out. At the age of 18 he became a pimp on the streets of Chicago, and worked his way up to kingpin status, going by the name of Iceberg Slim. Jailed several times (and escaping once), he eventully retired and became an insecticide salesman in LA, only writing his autobiography at the random urging of a college professor.
With massive book sales, you might wonder why no one’s adapted the book before. Well, they’ve tried, but versions featuring the likes of Ice Cude and Pras (of the Fugees) foundered, largely because of a seemingly neverending lawsuits between the author’s estate and the book’s publishers. However that’s now been settled, allowing the Hollywood producers to swoop in and buy up the rights.
Producer Rob Weiss commented, “The story is really the birth of the American inner city and it’s an incredible tale of overcoming oppression. It speaks of a very specific time in America and its street culture. The book is filled with broken souls but shows how in the end, Iceberg found a way to heal himself.”
There’s no news on who they’re looking at to play Iceberg himself, but we’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything.