The unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. will take center stage in a new movie starring Johnny Depp. Depp will play the late Los Angeles Police Department detective Russell Poole in Brad Furman's Labyrinth, Screen Dailyreported. Furman is directing from a script by Christian Contreras, drawing inspiration from Randall Sullivan's 2003 book of the same name.
The book centers on Poole's attempts in 1997 to investigate a highly publicized cop-on-cop shooting incident, an investigation that eventually led the detective to take a closer look at the deaths of Tupac and Biggie:
"Igniting a firestorm of controversy in the music industry and the Los Angeles media, the hardcover publication of LAbyrinth helped to prompt two lawsuits against the LAPD (one brought by the widow and mother of Notorious B.I.G., the other brought by Poole himself) that may finally bring this story completely out of the shadows."
Though 2016 has been a very bad year for Depp's public image, the filmmakers are likely banking on his well-received performance in last year's Whitey Bulger biopic Black Mass. Additionally, Furman's success with the Matthew McConaughey-starring drama The Lincoln Lawyer and this year's Pablo Escobar chase epic The Infiltrator bode well for Labyrinth.
The film's announcement comes on the heels of All Eyez on Me, the once-troubled Tupac biopic directed by Benny Boom and starring Demetrius Shipp Jr. "This is one of the biggest biopics that will ever be done," Shipp told Complex in August of the recently wrapped production. "Next to Michael Jackson, you know what I'm saying?"
