Dave Franco’s sinister-looking directorial debut The Rental comes out this weekend, but enough about that, let’s get to the part where he’s playing Vanilla Ice in a biopic about the ’90s rapper. The Neighbors star’s participation was rumored last year, but he confirmed his involvement during a recent interview with Insider, saying, “We have been in development for a while but we are inching closer and closer to preproduction.”
Franco compared the biopic, which follows Vanilla Ice from a “high school dropout selling cars in Dallas to having the first hip-hop single to top the Billboard charts,” to The Disaster Artist, which chronicled the making of Tommy Wiseau’s cult classic The Room (he played Greg Sestero to brother James Franco’s Tommy). “With that movie, people expected us to make a broad comedy where we make fun of Tommy Wiseau, but the more real we played it, the funnier and heartfelt it was — that’s the tone we want for this one as well,” he said. The movie’s current title is To the Extreme, a reference to Vanilla Ice’s 1990 debut album which has sold over 15 million copies worldwide. I would have gone with Hittin’ Like a Ninja Turtle, but that’s why I’m not in the movie-making business.
“[Vanilla Ice / birth name Rob Van Winkle] is such a sweet and intelligent guy and he’s been super helpful in the process of getting all the details correct and making us privy to information the public doesn’t know. Just talking to him I can’t help but think about the rabbit holes I’m going to go down to get ready for the role.”
I am excited for Franco’s shot-for-shot recreation of the “drop that zero and get with a hero” scene from Cool as Ice. He prepared by using that line on Alison Brie (it worked).
(Via Insider)