Last we heard, Ice Cube was still looking for a home for his gritty urban drama **Chrome and Paint. Now it seems he's found it... at Disney.
The film takes Cube straight back to his Compton roots, circling the custom car community of South Central LA. Deadline compare it to Saturday Night Fever and American Graffiti, and Cube had initially conceived the project as a hard-edged, R-rated street fable, but is now re-tooling it for a PG-13.
Chrome and Paint apparently "uses the subculture of tricked out Mercedes, BMW and Low Rider cars to frame a drama about the temptation to place materialism above all else" so there's clearly a message there for the kids. But it's hard to shake the feeling that Cube is voluntarily pulling his own teeth here. Still, it ought to be preferable to another of his cuddly-Cube kids films, and if not, there's still the NWA biopic and his in-the-works cop movie with David O Russell to look forward to.
Cube, as well as co-writing with Eva Vives (a member of the Disney Writing Fellowship programme), is also stepping behind the camera for this one. He just finished filming Rampart, has a tour coming up for his latest album I Am The West, and will then head to Jonah Hill's 21 Jump Street. So Chrome and Paint is a while away yet...