Donald Glover has landed at the top of Freeway Rick Ross’ wish list as he begins to finalize preproduction on his biopic.
In a new interview with Vlad TV, Ross and director Mike Ho revealed that they agreed on this dream casting decision almost as soon as they began discussing the development of the as yet untitled film. Ho added that he would even be open to having Donald Glover come on board as a co-director.
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“I’m always down to collaborate,” he said. “As a director, every actor is a director to me in the sense of understanding a scene and geting things done. But I think he would be brilliant for it. He was the first name that kind of came up over dinner. And he’s just a genius at what he does.”
While Freeway stated that he’s been working on the film for nearly 35 years, he said that it was very important to him to find a director who would handle his story with care. Something he feels has not been done with the hit FX series, Snowfall, which mirrors many aspects of his rise as a drug kingpin in Los Angeles in the 1980s.
“It be hard for me to sit there and watch sometimes,” Freeway Rick Ross said. “It’s so much bullshit. This is really history that they’re fucking with. Because people know that it’s some real in that show. This is really our history.
“This would be like taking slavery and playing with slavery; that’s how delicate the story really is. And for somebody to take it and butcher it up and do what John [Singleton] did; or allowed them to do. I don’t care who did it.”
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The treatment of Rick Ross’ story is equally as important to Mike Ho — who impressed Freeway with the amount of research he had done about the former street boss’ life even before they had their first meeting about the project.
“When his story fell on my desk, it was a transitional period [for me] in the sense of like, I wanted to do something that’s more impactful in film,” Ho explained. “I had just got a job on one of my first movies, its action, it’s great. But there’s something about true stories; and especially about his story which I feel has just never been told the right way. And I told him and he feels the same way.
He continued: “And one of the first things that I said when I sat down with him was like, if we’re gonna tell your story, we gotta be unsafe. Because I feel like when everyone approaches something with him, even the shows that he’s not happy with, all the stuff you hear about Freeway, it’s always a safe version of him. We’ve never seen the raw and uncut true story of what Ross is saying.”
Both Freeway Rick Ross and Mike Ho joked that their team has warned them that revealing Donald Glover as their top pick could impact negotiations. But considering Freeway’s current timeline, they’re encouraged by the fact that it could also help bring Glover on board more quickly.
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The team is currently hoping to start filming as soon as January or February.
