N.W.A fans and cinephiles alike have been eagerly watching over the past year as Ice Cube and Dr. Dre pulled together Straight Outta Compton, a biopic that charts the rise of their seminal hip-hop group, and now the first trailer for that hotly anticipated film has arrived – courtesy of Cube himself, who screened the preview during a Sydney concert.
As such, the footage is a little blurry, but two videos (one close up but blurry, and one far away but clear) give a pretty clear picture of what was screened. And the main takeaway is that this movie looks really terrific – as the project has progressed, Cube and Dre, alongside director F. Gary Gray and producers Matt Alvarez and Tomica Woods-Wright, took great care to find actors who really embodied the members of N.W.A, and that diligence appears to have paid off.
Cube’s own son, O’Shea Jackson Jr., plays his father, and though there were questions as to whether the first-time actor had the dramatic chops to pull off the part, Jackson’s scenes in the trailer seem to confirm that he’s going to nail it. Straight Outta Compton also stars Corey Hawkins as Dre, Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, Paul Giamatti as the group’s ruthless manager Jerry Heller, Aldis Hodge as MC Ren and Keith Stanfield as Snoop Dogg.
Cube and Dre have toiled long and hard to make this movie, and it looks like their efforts are going to result in an absolutely stellar biopic. Waiting until August 15th to see Straight Outta Compton is going to be agonizing, but something tells me the wait will be worth it.
In the mid-1980s, the streets of Compton, California, were some of the most dangerous in the country. When five young men translated their experiences growing up into brutally honest music that rebelled against abusive authority, they gave an explosive voice to a silenced generation. Following the meteoric rise and fall of N.W.A., STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON tells the astonishing story of how these youngsters revolutionized music and pop culture forever the moment they told the world the truth about life in the hood and ignited a cultural war.
Starring O’Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E, STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON is directed by F. Gary Gray (Friday, Set It Off, The Italian Job). The drama is produced by original N.W.A. members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, who are joined by fellow producers Matt Alvarez and Tomica Woods-Wright. Will Packer serves as executive producer of the film alongside Gray.