The production company Morgan Creek has sued Amaru Entertainment, alleging that the company ran by Afeni Shakur has reneged on an agreement to sell 2Pac’s life rights for an upcoming film adaptation.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Amaru and Morgan Creek started negotiations in November of 2008 for a currently untitled Tupac Shakur biopic. The complaint states a written contract was in place for the late Shakur’s life rights, but representatives from Morgan Creek were unhappy with Amaru Entertainment’s “refusal to honor and perform a contract of a production of the film based on the life of Tupac Shakur.” Morgan Creek is reportedly seeking financial damages and other relief.

Amaru Entertainment lawyer, Skip Miller, says no written contract was in place, and he indicates that Amaru will take defensive measures.

“They have scared away Paramount, Fox and others, and we are going to sue them and recover millions (in damages),” Miller told The Reporter.

While life rights and permission from Afeni Shakur aren’t necessarily needed to make the film, since 2Pac was a public figure, some agreement would need to be reached to include any works from 2Pac’s musical catalogue.

The Reporter adds that those close to the situation point to “Notorious” as a culprit. The biopic based on the late Notorious B.I.G. did not bring in as much as Fox Searchlight hoped to, despite a $21.5 million opening weekend. A rift between Morgan Creek and Amaru Entertainment reportedly developed shortly after the release of “Notorious,” with either one or both parties disagreeing on changes to the movie to avoid a similar fate at the box office.

Morgan Creek has declined to comment on the situation.

Does that mean he’s overrated? Check out our Top 10 Most Overrated MC’s gallery!

SOURCE: HipHopDX

Cheo Hodari Coker will write Lowriders, a drama set in the world of low-riding cars for Universal and Imagine. Imagine’s Brian Grazer is producing.

The project is based on an idea by Grazer, who is known for exploring concepts, personalities and settings, even devoting a specialist to handle these intellectual and artistic endeavors. He was intrigued by the low-riding culture, which sees mainly teens driving cars that can adjust or have adjusted their suspension system. The culture finds its home in California and the Southwest, primarily among the Latino and black cultures.

Imagine and Universal execs went on a manhunt for a scribe who could not only write authentically about the scene but also craft a solid story. Coker, who is coming off of the Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious, fit the bill.

SOURCE: The Hollywood Reporter

As former label mates in the ‘90′s with Bad Boy Records, R&B group 112 and Notorious B.I.G. spent a good amount of time together touring and recording in the studio. Collaborating on the hit singles “Only You” and “Sky’s the Limit,” it pained the four-man crew to see Biggie go at the peak of his career.

With B.I.G.’s legacy resurrecting through the new biographical movie, Notorious, former 112 member Michael Keith spoke to HipHopDX about one particular gesture from Biggie Smalls that has stayed in his memory to this day. “There was a show that B.I.G. and we were doing together, but because 112 was new to the game, the promoter wanted to reduce our show time. We weren’t happy to say the least,” Keith noted.

Frustrated, the group seemingly had no choice but to take the shorten performance slot, until Biggie stepped in. “We passed by B.I.G. on our way to the stage and told him how the promoter was trying to play us, and B.I.G. (who was the headliner) told the promoter that unless he gave us our regular show time he wasn’t going to perform, period! We got our time back and B.I.G. even preformed ‘Only You’ with us. That’s the kinda dude he was; he had a really big heart.”

Notorious is currently playing in movie theaters, while Keith’s self-titled solo disc is available in record stores now.

SOURCE: HipHopDX

Courtesy of the good folks over at SOHH.com:

“Rapper-turned-actor Jamal “Gravy” Woolard is reportedly due in court later this month for an alleged assault on his wife.

The alleged incident took place last fall.

‘Court records show Jamal Woolard was arrested and charged back on September 14 with misdemeanor assault, menacing, and harassment after an alleged altercation with his wife, Trina Younger. Woolard is due to appear in court on the charges January 29. (TMZ)’

In other reports reveal Woolard’s mother-in-law disputed the reports.

‘Paperwork shows Woolard admitted responsibility, allegedly telling cops, “She wouldn’t stop pushing me, so I snuffed her.” The rapper’s mother-in-law, who is staying with the couple during the film’s opening weeks, said she was unaware of any domestic-violence incident. “I know he wouldn’t hit her,” said Roslyn Younger. “He’s not like that. Most definitely, they have a good relationship. That’s impossible. I think it’s made up. He’s a loving husband and I never heard of anything like that before in my life.” (New York Post)’

The news comes a day after Woolard signed a deal with It Girl Pulic Relations.

“I want to be the guy that is a chameleon with performances, known for a diverse body of work and hopefully fortunate to be working in this business for a long time,” Woolard said in a statement. (Hip Hop Press Release)”

What do you think? Jamal forgot that he’s not in a movie?

Reports of violence weren’t enough to keep moviegoers away this past weekend from seeing Notorious, the much anticipated biopic of slain Hip-Hop icon The Notorious B.I.G.

Released figures have confirmed the project grossed $21.5 million in its opening weekend.

This amount placed the film at number four behind My Bloody Valentine 3-D ($21.9 million), Gran Torino ($22.2 million), and Mall Cop ($33.8 million).

However, Notorious with its limited theater release of 1,638 still boasted the best per screen average at $13,126.

To read our review of the film and watch interviews of the Notorious cast click HERE.

First off, let me get this point clear by saying that Notorious is a solid biopic with a foolproof rise-and-fall storyline that follows the line of films that have already tugged at heartstrings leaving out of the ’08.

Pleasantly played by Jamal Woolard, the film leaves the particulars of the 1997 slaying to the imagination, focusing on his growth and influence as an artist. The narrative that Woolard lays down showcases the first-time actor’s dedication of becoming Biggie. From vocal intonation to physical appearance and mannerisms, Woolard is clearly leading the pack of the colorful cast in making Notorious a film to remember for the ages.

Director George Tillman Jr. treats this film with respect – not only the hip-hop community – but to the fans and family, as well. The “assassination” was shot with alarming detail and subtle references to who may be the culprit behind the murder. But this unofficial third movie on late 20th Century American popular music (think Bird and Cadillac Records) will hold a dear place in the hearts of those who were there, who were influenced and who ultimately profitted from his demise.

The story begins in Brooklyn, Bed-Stuy to be exact, where the child of a single, striving mother, Voletta Wallace (Angela Bassett) calls the future legendary gangsta “Chrissie-poo.” The boy becomes a beast as a crack-dealing, gun possessing, jail-bird of Fulton Street who eventually evolves into the baddest rapper in Brooklyn.

Notorious being shot in 38 days may seem as if the folks behind it were in a mad dash to complete the project, but the hectic pace of racing from Bed-Stuy to Los Angeles was worth it as Tillman helms the camera with the capability he showcased in Soul Food and Men of Honor.

The alliance with Sean Combs (Derek Luke) leads to a record deal after friend, D-Roc, takes a charge for him. With that the doors open wide with friendships with Tupac going from good to fatal, love blossoms in three separate ways with Faith Evans (Antonique Smith), Lil Kim (Naturi Naughton) and Charli Baltimore all vie for the big man’s heart.

But with all of the joy that comes with success, the rule of “mo money, mo problems” applies. The sense of doom never permeates through the film. Whether or not that is a good thing, it still up for the audience to debate. Usually in-depth with her character, Angela Bassett isn’t given sufficient material to show her usual depth, leaving the supporting cast to carry the weight of B.I.G.’s shadow. Overall, the prinicipal women in Small’s life do well to balance the hectic life of fame that Christopher Wallace has become a part of.

Meanwhile, Mackie comes close to stealing every scene he’s in, his Shakur emitting a natural incandescence that contrasts with Biggie’s stolid darkness.

The script, often weighted down with expository luggage, shows the social implications of the story and how when overplayed, they only serve to show how subtle the movie really is. In the end, Notorious is a puff piece, but not full of shiny suit mania that would make you regret walking into the theater. The characters do a fine job of explaining the truth behind the myth of the Notorious B.I.G. with respect, honor and a charisma that is still unparalleled today.

GET MORE NOTORIOUS COVERAGE HERE!

Yesterday, the ladies of Notorious sat down with The Urban Daily and talked about the in’s and out’s of their role. Today, with the film opening in theaters nationwide, the gentlemen of Notorious dig deep and talk about how it felt to portray some of hip-hop’s legendary stars and director George Tillman offers his assessment on Suge Knight, why Charli Baltimore wasn’t included in this tale and gives his opinion on who killed Brooklyn’s own Frank White.

Jamal Woolard

On Preparing For His Role As B.I.G.:

“Man, I had to do a lot of hard work. I went through my own personal Biggie boot camp. Five months before I was cast, I was already in my zone. I had to learn his mannerisms, his behavior… I learned what hand he used to talk with. The breathing patterns he used because he had asthma. I had to get down his walk with the wobble, keeping my chin high. You never see his face straight, it’s kind of stoic.”

On Shooting The Shooting:

“We were shooting at like 1 o’clock, maybe 2 in the morning. Knowing that a car is going to pull up on you and you hear those shots… It’s crazy. The mindset that I had going into it was weighing on me heavily. I hadn’t seen my daughter in weeks and just knowing that I’m about to die and that I’m ready to die, I go in peace.”

Derek Luke:

On Support From Diddy:

“I almost felt like he was too supportive. He asked me about playing him and I just wanted to meet him. He has a lot of confidence in himself and I just wanted to know why. He was always a phone call always. He didn’t want to be on set for fear of messing up my groove. He’s acting now, so he understands that process. I was immensely interested in the journey of Sean Combs.”

On The East Coast/West Coast Beef:

“In doing research, I found out that it was all a media developed slogan. Everybody that got hyped or emotional after that word came on the scene got a false rise. Notorious finds us telling the story of a human being, so we wanted to expose those characters in a different light than what the media portrayed them to be.”

Anthony Mackie:

On Tupac:

“I am a huge fan of Tupac. The first CD I got was Strictly For My N.I.G.G.A.Z. I re-read a lot of Eldridge Cleaver and Michael Eric Dyson. It was just a lot of reading and listening to ‘Pac’s music. I was really listening to the things he said with a fine-toothed comb to be able to get what he’s trying to get across, across. He put his work in and that was something to admire.”

On Hip-Hop In The 90’s:

“Man, it was all about partying and bullshit! I was 18 around that time and I was away from home for the first time in boarding school. It was practically high school on a college campus. I was looking for Papa John’s and girls [laughs]. The biggest thing for me was listening for that West Coast mentality. They made it seem like such a scary place… and it was! So, when I read Cheo’s book and listened to ‘Pac’s lyrics made it all a completely different world. But ‘Pac, to me, fed B.I.G. a lot of food, so I was all about ‘Pac. Everything he put out, everything he wrote, I was down for it and it wasn’t no East Coast/West Coast thing, either!”

George Tillman:

On B.I.G.:

“I was more familiar with Biggie Smalls’ music. I did see Tupac once and I definitely drew a different side to his character that we capture in this film. Most of the stuff we saw with B.I.G. was a once in a lifetime thing – like him smiling in the “Hypnotize” video. All the behind-the-scenes stuff that I saw showed him as this charismatic, happy go-lucky giant.

You started seeing a different B.I.G. after Tupac’s death. He did an interview in San Francisco and he’s questioning whether he wants to do rap anymore. It’s interesting to see a guy at 24 become a full man. When you look back on this boy selling crack on Fulton Street in the 80s in Brooklyn and see what he turned into, you have to be honest, to see both sides of the story is an impacting thing to experience.”

On B.I.G.’s Murder:

“Even from doing research, it just seems baffling! There’s only one or two guards on duty and one of them told me that there were guys trying to pay one thousand dollars just to get inside the venue. It was a planned hit. You had to be law enforcement to get close like that. The way the shooter shot, the bullet full-circle through the door. They had to be a professional. This was bigger than any street level stuff. I didn’t really want to take the movie to a different level, but I feel like that has to be an account of the things that happened. So, I placed certain people in the background and I did it very subtly. These are really just my thoughts and at the end of the day, no one really knows because of law enforcement and street law codes. But I do know this, at the end of the day, Tupac and Biggie were just a small part of a bigger thing.

When I talked to Miss Wallace, the first thing I remember her telling me that after the shooting at Quad Studios, Tupac actually called B.I.G. at her house and they missed the phone call. B.I.G. was upset that he missed the call. I look at it with some symbolism – had they had that chance to talk, who knows what would’ve happened.”

On Talking To Suge:

“I haven’t talked to him. I saw him on Melrose when I was driving by and you know that’s Suge when you see him [laughs]. It was kind of weird though. He looked back and I slowed down and he just looked at me. He has a very big street awareness and he ain’t nobody you just want to be caught staring at.
I haven’t talked to Suge. I saw him one time on Melrose when I was driving by. And I was just driving down the steet and I was like man that’s suge knight. It was a very weird thing, he looked back and I just slowed down. You know that’s the guy. I just slowed down and he just looked like this. He was with somebody and they looked back, and that was it. He has a very big street awareness. He ain’t nobody you just want to be caught staring at.”

On Why There Was No Charli Baltimore:

“I felt like with Charli Baltimore that would have been a forth woman in his life and I feel like to me, we do see her in the car crash, she was there. That’s how accurate we try to be. She was a very talented person and very important in his life, but I felt like four women, it may be too much and out of all the women too I loved Jan. I talked to her the most when I was making the movie and she’s a beautiful woman. She met B.I.G. early on in her life. They connected. She was a little bit older and he was just trying to be the best he could be.”

On Kim & B.I.G.’s Relationship:

“With Kim, their relationship was always on and off. There were points where they would even stop talking. I think if he were still alive their relationship would still be ongoing, as friends. She was the one that most related closer to him, they lived right down the street from each other. They had the same personality.”

GET MORE NOTORIOUS COVERAGE HERE!

Tomorrow marks the opening night for George Tillman’s Notorious. A lot has happened since the film has been screened and pushed out to the public. With the hype, drama and emotions boiling over, Notorious is a must-see film and The Urban Daily got a chance to sit down with the ladies of this Brooklyn biopic.

Angela Bassett (Voletta Wallace), Naturi Naughton (Lil Kim), Antonique Smith (Faith Evans) and the late Frank White’s mother all express their thoughts about Biggie, their characters and share a little insight on the Brooklyn don.

Antonique Smith

On Playing Faith:

“I auditioned, I studied her movements through watching YouTube videos. When I put on that frumpy sweatsuit, I looked real chill. I would go to the studio and that’s what I had seen her do in an interview – be real chill. When everyone else saw me, they saw Faith. So, George Tillman and the casting director knew that I had made it. I fixed my hair, put some make-up on, wore some tight jeans, some high heels and put a little bright shirt on, came back out and did the scene and the rest was history.”

On Being Married To B.I.G.:

“In my research, I had discovered that in the 90’s there were rumors that she had married [B.I.G.] for money and for fame, that she tried to latch herself onto this famous guy. But that wasn’t the case! He wasn’t even famous. No offense to B.I.G. or his fans, but she had more money than him in the beginning. [Faith] was writing songs for Mary J. Blige and Al B. Sure. It was a complete misconception. In the end, she married him out of love and was so in love with his wit, his charm and his boyish qualities. It was those same qualities that kind of lead to a lot of their other issues, but she was completely in love with him.”

On Similarities Between Her & Faith:

“Faith and I are from the same area, but we had completely different environments. She grew up with her grandmother and all these foster kids. But we both came up in the church. So, I latched myself into her upbringing based om those similarities and the desire to just want things to be right. When you’re about to enter the public eye, it’s hard to keep things in perspective, but Faith had her head on her shoulders.”

Naturi Naughton

On Playing Lil Kim:

“I auditioned a few times. A lot of more experienced actresses were up for the role, so I just really studied hard and I came in very natural. I wore this blazer, a little cute skirt and some flats – definitely not Lil Kim attire at all – and that’s what the casting director saw in me. They weren’t looking for the crazy Lil Kim, they were looking for the person, Kimberly Jones.

On Not Meeting Lil Kim:

I didn’t get a chance to meet my character or speak with her. I had to latch onto her personality. In the music business, I’ve been a recording artist from a young age and have been criticized for various things in my life and I think that Lil Kim – in the film – experienced rejection and transformed into something to make her more beautiful. She was whatever it was that the man she was in love with was telling her what she should be. I used this film as an opportunity to bring more of Naturi into this character and show everything that I needed to show without any outside influences. I had all the materials needed, the support of my cast and the support of the director to do what was needed to be done. Unfortunately, Kim and I didn’t meet, but I used that as strength and kept going.

Angela Bassett

On Her Thoughts About B.I.G.:

I’ve seen so many documentaries on VH1 and I’ve seen the way artist’s have been exploited because there’s many people who liked, loved and maybe hated his music, but they still wanted to know the man. This movie needed to be done to examine why people liked him so much, why did they hate him and to tell his story.

Voletta Wallace

On Early B.I.G. Memories:

There were days that I heard things in the room and I called it ‘noise.’ I would hear something and ask him to stop [laughs]! I thought it was the radio or something. Then, one day, he opened the door and he said, ‘Ma, we’re not making noise, that’s music!’ I thought, ‘Oh, God!’ [laughs] He said it was rap music. But you know something, I tolerated the noise.

On Tupac:

He had said some things about Christopher, but I never bought the magazines to know what was going on. He had actually called the house wanting to talk to Christopher. Tupac had called the house a lot during that time. It wasn’t until a friend had come by to ask me what was going on between the two of them when I paid it any attention. I had never paid it any credence.

GET MORE NOTORIOUS COVERAGE HERE!

Voletta Wallace, the mother of the late Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, has heard the comments from Faith Evans, from Reggie Rock-Bythewood and even from Lil Kim and has nothing but questions.

Check out what she wants to ask the Queen Bee below:

Notorious has finally arrived. There has been a lot of attention on this movie as of late and we will let the readers decide if all the hype was worth it on this historic biopic.

Blue Flame, Bad Boy Entertainment’s Marketing Company is hosting a series of Notorious screenings across the country today and tommorrow. The dates and times are below.

NOTORIOUS MOVIE SCREENINGS

* Washington DC @ Landmark Theater (1/13)
* Philadelphia @ Pearl Theater (1/13)
* Detroit @ Ren Cen 4 (1/13)
* Chicago @ AMC River East (1/12)
* Miami @ South Beach 18 (1/12)
* Baltimore @ Landmark Harbor East (1/13)
* Atlanta @ AMC Fork & Screen Buckhead (1/13)
* Dallas @ Angelika Film Center (1/12)
* Houston @ Regal Edwards Marq*ECinema (1/12)
* Los Angeles @ Arclight Hollywood (1/12)

Be sure to check out behind-the-scenes and exclusive footage from Notorious via GIANT Magazine‘s below: