Having written the screenplay for the Notorious B.I.G. movie, writer Cheo Hodari Coker is now gearing up to bring more rap stars' lives to the big screen. He's signed on to adapt Bill Adler's book Tougher Than Leather: The Rise of Run-DMC — The Authorized Biography for film which "will explore the history of hip-hop's first superstars: Joseph 'Run' Simmons, Darryl 'DMC' McDaniels and Jason 'Jam Master Jay' Mizell, who was shot to death in his Queens studio in 2002." Here's more:
With such hits as "It's Like That," "It's Tricky," "My Adidas" and "Walk This Way," Run-DMC exploded from the Queens neighborhood of Hollis onto the international stage with the help of future mogul Russell Simmons, Rev. Run's brother. An early MTV staple, the group influenced much of rap's future royalty.
"It's an extraordinary rags-to-riches journey that I'm eager to bring to the screen," [producer Dallas] Jackson said. "And I'm hoping to have Run, DMC and Russell Simmons' involvement. This will be a big movie about the 1980s hip-hop movement that took over the world."
I gotta say, this is a story I'm genuinely intrigued to see play out in biopic form, especially in this day and age when we can look back and see how hip-hop would be a totally different scene without these guys. Do you think this project sounds interesting? Are there other major players in music history who you'd like to see get a movie of their own?
