Idris Elba, Taylour Paige, and Justice Smith are all attached to star in the rap drama, We All Die Young.
Jake Schreier will direct the picture and Daveed Diggs is penning the script based on a story by Diggs and Chinaka Hodge.
We All Die Young centers on Marcus (Smith), a rapper in the midst of breaking big and undertaking the biggest live tour anyone has ever seen. At the same time, he’s under pressure to make new music and is hopelessly blocked. It’s a midlife crisis like Fellini’s 8 1/2. Only here, that crisis comes in his early 20s, because young Black men in the rap industry often don’t live to see 30.
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Diggs, explains the film in more detail below:
The film follows a rapper who reaches the ripe old age of 25, which in rap years, if you ask any of us who participate in the culture, starts to feel like you’re entering a different era. He’s had regional success but when we meet him he’s on the verge of his big crossover hit and is going to become a bona fide superstar. The life he’s leading is at odds with everything he grew up living. There is a cognitive dissonance between where you grew up and where you find yourself and you start to wonder why and how you got to this place. It’s not unique to rappers, but when you talk to these young kids who are blowing up real fast, you start to recognize this is the dilemma they deal with: how to speak to the culture they come from, living the life they’re living.
Our character is at a place where he can’t create anymore. He launches onto this insane world tour, the biggest thing he’s ever been on, taking him all over the world and interacting with all kinds of new people. He can’t stop and he can’t make new music. And everyone wants new music. In order to deal with these demons he develops a Lean addiction, it’s also called Sizzurp. It’s a prescription cough syrup that is often mixed with sweet soda.
He stops the tour, and in the middle of the desert, builds himself a compound and tries to make the next great rap album, hoping that fixes his problems. We witness the unraveling of this very brilliant young man.
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Details on Elba and Paige’s roles have yet to be revealed.
Temple Hill’s Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen and Isaac Klausner with Diggs, Schreier and Benny Blanco will produce Beacon 23. YG is exec producing and Aaron Lammer is co-producing. CAA Media Finance and WME will handle domestic distribution, while FilmNation handles international.
Production begins in March.