Tupac Shakur's jail time screenplay picked up; headed to the big screen

Peddling the unproduced tracks of late hip hop icon, Tupac Shakur, has become a cottage industry in and of itself. There have been more albums by the rapper released after his death than while he was alive, which isn't doing anything to squash all those rumors of him and Biggie Smalls sipping pina coladas on some island in the middle of nowhere. If you've ever taken the time to peep any of these post-death releases, you probably already know that the rapper kept them on the shelf for a damn good reason. They can't all be gems, right? While I maintain that Tupac was more a force of nature than an actual rap talent, he had his feet dipped into a number of pools during his career. He had a fairly successsful acting career for one, and at one point was considering taking his Hollywood involvement to another level. While serving an 11-month prison bid on weapons charges, Tupac penned the only screenplay he would ever complete, and now Variety is reporting that the rights to that story have been scooped up by NStar Studios with plans to bring it to the big screen. Production is set to begin early in 2012.

The film is called Live 2 Tell, and tells the story of a teenage drug lord and his efforts to leave a life of crime. Sounds pretty generic to me, but it's subject matter that would've been familiar to the rapper and thus could prove to be more effective than the other urban dramas of the sort that we've seen. Then again, the plot feels like something that would've been a solid gold hit back in the 90s when we were getting movies like this all the time. So it's possible some touching up of the script might need to be done to make it a little fresher.

Preston Holmes, one of the owners of NStar, previously worked with Tupac's mother on the documentary Tupac: Resurrection. She will be serving as a producer on this film as well.