Dame Dash May Soon Have a Biopic That He Doesn't Get Paid From. There's a Reason.

Dame Dash has been in the news for a lot of things lately. But more than the endless Jay-Z and Cam’ron insults, the strangest story involves the possibility of a biopic.

There is a good chance you’ll see a movie about the Roc-A-fella co-founder in theaters or on streaming in the near future. And if you watch it, there will be one very weird detail not reflected in the credits: Dash himself is very unlikely to see a dollar.

All of this came into public view recently when a filing in Dash’s bankruptcy proceedings revealed that the trustee overseeing the whole thing asked the judge for permission to auction off Dash’s life rights and use the money “for the benefit of creditors.” That means they want to use the events of his life (and whatever footage he’s holding on to) to make a biopic, documentary, or book. The money made from the sale would go directly to the people Dame owes money to, and not to him.

As bizarre as this may seem, for people paying close attention to Dame’s movements, this auction request (which the judge has not yet ruled on) comes as no surprise at all. The possibility of selling off life rights in order to pay off creditors was first raised almost a year ago, right after Dame first filed for bankruptcy.

It was brought up by a lawyer named Christopher Brown. He has represented three people who sued Dash—as well as himself—and collectively won millions from him. He was convinced that Dame’s sudden bankruptcy was in “bad faith,” a way to get out of paying his debts. Brown noted that Dame didn’t include his “most valuable asset” in initial his bankruptcy filing—his life rights. You can draw a straight line from Brown’s complaint last September to the recent proposed auction.

To get the full picture of why Dame stands on the verge of having a movie made about him that he’ll make no money from, we have to look at the cases Brown was involved in: three sets of related lawsuits that Dame lost, putting him more than $5.3 million worth of debt, with another $10 million still at stake. That takes us deep into a tale of shady business practices, public insults, and the effects that had on people who simply wanted to make some movies.

To do all that, we spoke to two of the people most affected by Dame’s business moves (and, in one case, by his insults): Josh Webber and Edwyna Brooks. Webber, a Canadian-born, L.A.-based director and producer, has been in court with Dash for nearly a decade — and has been on the receiving end of more than one of Dame’s public tirades (yes, he’s even been called a “culture vulture”). Brooks comes from a tiny North Carolina town, though she’s now based in Hawaii. When not taking care of her family or working for the Army Corps of Engineers, she writes books and movies. She too has had her struggles with Dame, after she tried to enlist his help to make her cinematic dreams come true.

Complex reached out to Damon Dash repeatedly, both directly and via people close to him, in an attempt to get comment for this story. He did not respond.

“He said, ‘I got this movie with Dame Dash and Cam’ron and we're going to film it in California. Do you want to come on board and produce it with me?’” Webber remembers. “I was all for it.”

Dash wanted to be the director, and the producers agreed mostly because of his fame—and also because his house was to be the set. But when production started, according to Webber and the other producer, things went downhill very quickly. In an interview, Webber recalls Dame being involved in “all types of drama” and “getting in fights left and right” on the set. His eventual lawsuit paints a more detailed picture, accusing Dash of being high during the production, aggressive towards the crew, and even passed out on multiple occasions. Webber stepped in as a “ghost director,” he says, to make sure the film was finished.

But there was another problem. Dame never signed his contract. Out of nowhere, Webber says, Dame demanded total ownership of the film. This left the producers no choice: In September 2018, Dash was officially fired from the project, now renamed Dear Frank.

But despite having no contract, and thus no more role on the film, Dame attempted to market it to BET. He shared artwork showing the title as Damon Dash Presents: The List. Then Dame really went into overdrive, publicly calling Webber a “culture vulture” and accusing him of being a “con man” who stole the film.

In 2019, Webber and his friend’s production company filed suit against Dash for both copyright infringement and defamation. In March 2022, a jury unanimously decided against Dame on both counts. Muddy Waters Pictures, the company run by Webber’s pal, was declared the sole owner of the film. Dame was permanently banned from promoting or distributing Dear Frank.

He was also ordered to pay a total of $823,000 to Muddy Waters and Webber—the vast majority of it to Webber, for defamation. Looking back on it now, Webber says that Dame’s constant insults came from “a mental state of overdrive and obsession-compulsion.”

As if to lend credence to that take, Dame didn’t stop after losing the suit. He went on a podcast in March, 2024 and talked about Webber again, as well as the filmmaker’s lawyer, Christopher Brown.

“These guys trigger me and steal my shit,” he said.

That comment about stealing ended up costing Webber a $4 million directing job, as well as, he says, several other deals. But lost jobs weren’t the only cost.

“I was getting death threats and people reaching out online to say, ‘When we see you, we're going to shoot you,’ all this terrible stuff,” he remembers. “That took away a sense of peace.”

Webber sued Dash for defamation—again—for the podcast comments and won, this time for $4 million. But that still wasn’t the end.

In 2025, Dash went on The Breakfast Club and talked about Webber one more time. First, he bragged that he didn’t owe Webber any money because he had just filed for bankruptcy. Then he went on to say that he was going to sue Webber for a RICO violation.

He sent Webber and a number of other people a message (subject line: “Enjoy your day fatso see you in court”) demanding $100 million, or else he would “file a civil RICO action in federal court.” He posted the threat on Instagram, too, additionally claiming that he’d “directed” and “financed” Dear Frank—claims a federal court had already decided were false.

Dash’s RICO threat never materialized, but it didn’t need to. AllHipHop wrote a story about Dash’s post. That didn’t sit very well with the people who were financing a movie called Torn, who had just agreed to pay Webber $10 million to direct and produce. About a week after Dash posted his message, a woman on the production emailed Webber.

“Dear Josh,” she began. “It has been brought to my attention that a recent post has surfaced online mentioning you in a very negative light. Please see the attached screenshot, which was retrieved from Instagram on an account owned by Damon Dash… [T]he same post has also appeared on AllHipHop.com… The investor who was funding the production has expressed deep concern and has requested your removal from the project.”

Three months later, Webber sued Dash for defamation a third time, now for the $10 million he lost when he was fired from Torn. That case is still ongoing, but Webber won an initial (though not yet finalized) default ruling.

Someone else was cc’d on that “Enjoy your day fatso” message: a woman who had gone through a similar experience with Dash, at around the same time. After meeting Dame at a seminar, she invited him to collaborate on a movie. Per court filings, he demanded to direct, wasted production time and money, got fired, and then stole the finished movie and started selling it himself—all while never having signed a contract.

In 2015, Edwyna Brooks was living in a two-stoplight North Carolina town when she saw that Dame was having a seminar nearby.

The self-proclaimed “soccer mom” had written a book called Mafietta, about a female mob boss. She heard Dame on The Breakfast Club talking about how he wanted to invest in women, and thought that he might have the connections to get her movie made. And if not, well, all she’d be wasting was a $50 entrance fee. As it turns out, it cost Brooks a lot more than that.

At the seminar, she waited to pitch to the mogul.

“When it was my turn, I explained my book,” she tells Complex.

And then, she got an unexpected boost.

“This lady jumped up out of the audience, [saying], ‘I read the book!’ And I was wearing a shirt that was branded with Mafietta. So [Dame] was like, ‘Oh my goodness. You have your own money, you have your own brand, you have your own merch. Let's go.’”

Dame immediately pushed to direct the film. Brooks felt uncomfortable with that, but it was a dealbreaker for him, so she relented. In exchange, he’d get a royalty of 50%. He also said that she could use some of Jay-Z’s music, which never panned out. She did insist on one thing: she would make all final decisions relating to the film’s release.

Brooks couldn’t be on set for most of the first day of shooting for Mafietta because she had to attend a funeral. She got a call saying that instead of working from the shotlist, Dame had spent hours shooting an unrelated music video.

“When I get to set, of course he minimizes it and his Damon Dash bravado sweeps over it,” Brooks tells Complex. “But I was able to feel it when we got to the completion of the film, and we didn't have all of the footage that we needed.”

Brooks eventually fired Dash from the film. Once again, he had refused to sign his contract. Looking back on the situation, Brooks realizes that Dame inadvertently clued her in on his eventual plan from the start.

“When I was at the seminar, I did say, ‘You know, you got to sign my contract,’” she says. “And he was like, ‘Well, it doesn't matter if you have a contract, if you can't afford to enforce it.’”

Once the film was done, Brooks wanted to put it in festivals. Even though Dame had, she recalls, already tried to steal footage from the editor, she acquiesced to his request to see the movie before it began screening.

“I'm a good natured North Carolina girl,” she explains.

What happened after that should sound familiar: Dame took the film and began selling it without her permission. He put it up on iTunes and offered it on his own subscription-based Dame Dash Studios platform.

“He was supposed to be a 50/50 partner in the profits, but never in ownership,” Brooks says—a stance that was ultimately affirmed both by a federal and an appellate court.

In selling the movie, Dame destroyed any value that Mafietta might have had in the marketplace. Brooks was ready to lick her wounds and chalk the whole thing up to experience. But then she heard about someone else who had a similar story.

“The AD from the project said, ‘Hey, Damon Dash did the same thing to this guy named Josh Webber,’” she recalls. “So I went on Instagram. I saw Josh's story and I just sent him a quick DM: ‘Hey, he did the same thing to me. I couldn't get justice, but I hope you can.’ After that, he responded, ‘Do you mind speaking to my attorney?’ And I'm like, no, I don't mind.”

She got in touch with Christopher Brown, who told her she had a shot at getting some redemption.

“He was like, ‘Edwyna, you didn't do anything wrong. You have every right to sue him. I'll take on this case.’ And then that's when I was able to turn from victim to victor.”

Brooks sued Dame Dash in 2019 for copyright infringement and won a $300,000 judgment. It was decided, officially, that Dame had no ownership of the film. During the proceedings, he had claimed to be a co-author, and thus that he co-owned it. This was not a take that the court found believable. His testimony “lacked both witness credibility and corroboration,” an appeals court wrote in their decision.

Despite her victory, the process was “excruciating” for Brooks.

“When you see court on TV, you have the the plaintiff and the defendant sitting side by side. But in this courtroom, he was sitting behind me,” she says. “So as the case is going on, he's making comments, he's making noises. That was kind of scary. It was a very uncomfortable experience.”

The judge in the case concurred with Brooks’ take on Dash’s behavior.

“Dash was throughout the trial disruptive and apparently incapable of exercising ordinary civility,” he wrote. “The Court finds Dash’s testimony to be unworthy of belief.”

To take just a few examples of Dash’s behavior cited by the judge: He disrupted testimony by “shouting out answers to questions directed at the witness, loudly accusing the witness of ‘lying,’ and repeatedly making gestures and uttering unpleasant noises.” He characterized Brown’s breath as “doo-doo.” The judge’s description of Dash’s testimony is filled with words like “evasive,” “inconsistent,” and “hyperbolic.”

But losing $300K for stealing her movie and getting a tongue-lashing from a federal judge, wasn’t enough for Dame when it came to Edwyna Brooks. Afterwards, his business sued Brooks for her allegedly unauthorized use of photograph taken by Dash’s wife on the set of Mafietta. The court determined that Dame’s suit was “meritless” and “retaliatory,” and awarded Brooks more than $75,000 to cover her legal costs.

During this whole battle, Brooks was worried that her and her husband’s jobs, both in government, might be affected.

While all of this legal drama was going on, Dame Dash had someone else in his sights: Christopher Brown.

While the Webber case was proceeding, Dame was sending emails insulting the lawyer, calling him a “con man.” At around the same time, early 2019, he began posting about Brown on Instagram, calling him a “crooked lawyer” and accusing him of robbing a child, a claim that related to a child actor in a film Brown had no interest in. During a deposition that December, Dash behaved aggressively towards the attorney, making threats so intense that the police were called.

Brown was hired by a woman named Monique Bunn, who was making battery and defamation claims against Dash. (After a long legal battle, Dash won on the battery claim and lost on defamation). Brown working on a third case against him pushed Dash to a new level. He began publicly and falsely claiming that the lawyer was under investigation by the FBI for extortion. In addition, he claimed that Brown was responsible for his arrest for failure to pay child support. Brown sued for defamation for all of this, and won $100,000.

Dash filed for bankruptcy in September, 2025, saying that he had just $4,350 in assets. The bulk of his debt was for taxes: millions owed to Los Angeles, New Jersey, and New York. Between that and other debts including child and spousal support, there are a lot of people in line for Dame Dash’s money before Webber, Brooks, and Brown.

That didn’t stop Edwyna Brooks. She has collected both her judgments—though, she explains, not because Dash wrote her a check. Instead, she got the $300,000 judgment because Dame had to put the entire amount in a bond in order to appeal, so she collected that when she won. The second judgment for the photo lawsuit has also been collected, she says.

For Webber, things are more complicated. His 2019 case with Dame is still ongoing, with the mogul doing whatever he can to avoid paying. This isn’t just Webber’s opinion, either. A federal judge backed it up, writing that “There is every reason to believe, and Defendants have provided no information to the contrary, that Defendants have engaged in fraudulent conveyance of assets”—a fancy way of saying that Dame has been moving money around in an attempt to avoid paying up.

This process has, in a twist, resulted in Webber owning the rights to several of Dash’s films—a process that has, unsurprisingly, come with its own set of delays, missing documents, and court sanctions against Dash. After all of this, Webber isn’t holding his breath for the dough.

“The way I look at this, these judgment dollars is they will be like a future windfall or some sort of a bonus,” he says. “It’s a benefit, not this idea of, ‘I'm angry and you owe me the money.’”

“If anything, I wish him luck,” he continues. “I believe in his capacity to potentially get lucky and repay these judgments in the future.”

Insulting people and not backing off even when it costs you may not work in federal court. But Sowmya Krishnamurthy, author of the upcoming book The Blueprint: Inside the Business of Roc-a-fella Records, tells Complex this approach is standard practice somewhere else: in hip-hop.

“[Dame] really comes from a place where, if I have an issue with you, I'm allowed to say it. We might even scrap it out,” she explains. “It’s about this idea of, ‘We should be able to speak man to man. We should be able to handle it. Sometimes we'll fight it out, sometimes we'll love it out. But that's just how it is.’ When you come into spaces that are a bit more corporate, that mindset ends up causing conflict.”

As for the endless insults and the constant need to be “evasive,” “inconsistent,” and “hyperbolic”? Well, the author reminds us, who does that sound like?

“I don't want to get to political, but you look at somebody like Trump who has a lot of those similar attributes, and that was what got him elected,” she says.

These days, Edwyna Brooks has a very different attitude towards Dame Dash than either her initial feelings of fear and powerlessness, or the “extreme aggravation” that followed during the endless legal proceedings.

“I feel sorry for him because he is seemingly powerless to self-correct,” she says. “I really wonder what he sees when he looks in the mirror.”