Despite the major plaudits he got for 8 Mile, Eminem hasn’t felt the need to try and turn himself into an all-out movie star, instead just taking a couple of TV guests spots and cameoing in the likes of Funny People, nearly always playing himself. However it appears he’s hoping to take another starring role, with Deadline reporting that Dreamworks has picked up a pitch for a movie called Southpaw, which will be developed as a starring vehicle for the rapper.
Like 8 Mile, it’s not so much a bid for movie stardom as an extension of Eminem’s music, with the idea that as with the previous film, the plot will be fuelled by the struggles that inform his albums and it will mirror his life.
Written by Sons Of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, the film will see Eminem play a fast-rising welterweight boxer who brawls his way to the title, only to see his world crash down around him due to tragedy. The movie is about his fight to reclaim past glory. Dreamworks snapped up the pitch immediately at they got first crack at it, due to DreamWorks co-chairman/CEO Stacey Snider having championed 8 Mile when she was at Universal.
Sutter says, “I know he’s [Eminem] very selective and doesn’t do a lot, but… He is very interested in the boxing genre, and it seemed like an apt metaphor, because his own life has been a brawl. In a way, this is a continuation of the 8 Mile story, but rather than a literal biography, 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.”