Despite successfully crossing over to movies with 8 Mile, rapper Eminem hasn’t really pushed ahead with his cinematic career. He cropped up as himself for a cameo in last year’s Funny People, but he’s largely been attached to projects (such as 3D anthology **Shady Talez) that have yet to see the screen. DreamWorks is hoping to change all that, nabbing a pitch for boxing movie Southpaw that sees the man also known as Marshall Mathers front and centre.
And fans of motorcycle club drama Sons of Anarchy will prick up their ears at the news that series creator Kurt Sutter is the man behind the pitch. "I've had a bunch of meetings with Marshall’s producing partners, and I know he's very selective and doesn't do a lot," Sutter tells Deadline. "But he shared so much of his personal struggle in this raw and very honest album (Legacy), 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.”
Sutter also shared a rough run down of the plot and its themes: “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."
As if Sutter didn’t have enough to think about, he’s been busy working up other ideas, but will switch to writing the Southpaw screenplay now so that he has time to sweat over a draft before reteaming with the Anarchy writers to begin figuring out the arc for the fourth season’s shows…