Its been nearly a decade since we last saw Marshall Bruce Mathers III, otherwise known as Eminem on the big screen with 8 MILE. Now a project the rapper has been attached to, SOUTHPAW, has been dropped from Dreamworks production slate.
The film scripted by SONS OF ANARCHY creator, Kurt Sutter, sees Eminem playing a left handed boxer whose personal and professional life falls apart from a tragic event. Here’s the writers description;
I took meetings with Marshall’s producing partners over the past 7 years, looking for something to do together. I know he’s very selective and doesn’t do a lot. But he shared so much of his personal struggle in this raw and very honest album, one that I connected with on a lot of levels. He is very interested in the boxing genre, and it seemed like an apt metaphor, because his own life has been a brawl. In a way, this is a continuation of the 8 Mile story, but rather than a literal biography, we are doing a metaphorical narrative of the second chapter of his life. He’ll play a world champion boxer who really hits a hard bottom, and has to fight to win back his life for his young daughter. At its core, this is a retelling of his struggles over the last five years of his life, using the boxing analogy. I love that the title refers to Marshall being a lefty, which is to boxing what a white rapper is to hip hop; dangerous, unwanted and completely unorthodox. It’s a much harder road for a southpaw than a right handed boxer
SOUTHPAW was originally picked up from Sutter’s pitch last year but with Dreamsworks carrying out a type of fire sale, dropping multiple projects in an effort to tighten their belts, the project will have to be shopped round to other studios. There is no clear reason behind cutting the project loose since it has so much going for it such as; an attached star in Eminem and director Antoine Fuqua (TRAINING DAY) who is also an ex-golden gloves fighter and a great writer in Sutter. One of the crucial factors could be the growing number of fight themed films in THE FIGHTER, WARRIOR and FIGHTING with the studio possibly believing the content of the film will be past its sell by date. Undoubtedly the film will be picked up and in production in the next couple of years.
