Keith Stanfield Set As Snoop Dogg

In Straight Outta Compton

With filming well underway, director F. Gary Gray is slowly filling out some of the supporting roles in N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton. And he’s found a prime candidate to play the young Snoop Dogg in the film, landing on Short Term 12’s Keith Stanfield.

Stanfield, who showed off his rap chops in the indie drama, will be Calvin Broadus Jr., better known to the wider world as Snoop Dogg, who crosses paths with the rappers during their rise.

Straight Outta Compton will chart the growth of a rap collective that boasted Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, DJ Yella and MC Ren and tore up the rap rulebook by matching funk and soul samples with angry accounts of life in the ghetto. The film aims to pick up the story in mid-1980s, six years before the band disbanded and a decade before Eazy-E’s death, and chart its rise to Billboard success.

Ice Cube is producing the movie and has his son, O’Shea Jackson playing him at a younger age alongside Corey Hawkins (Dre), Jason Mitchell (Eazy-E), Aldis Hodge (MC Ren) and Neil Brown Jr. (Yella). Also in the cast are Paul Giamatti as the group’s manager, Jerry Heller, Sheldon A. Smith as Warren G and Carra Patterson as Tomica Woods. Gray has the cameras rolling now, aiming for an August 14, 2015 release in the States.

Stanfield, whose career took off thanks to Short Term 12, was most recently seen in The Purge: Anarchy. He has Miles Davis drama Miles Ahead and civil rights film Selma on the way.

from Empire News