VIP, let’s kick it! Dave Franco will play rapper Vanilla Ice in an upcoming biopic titled “To the Extreme,” TheWrap confirmed with the actor’s reps.
“To the Extreme” focuses on the rise of the rapper (whose real name is Robert Van Winkle) from a high school dropout who sells cars in Dallas to have the first hip-hop single to top the Billboard charts with ” Ice Ice Baby. ” A young Vanilla Ice struggles with stardom, extortion attempts and sales while making music history.
Also read: Vanilla Ice postpones Austin concert after complaints about media pandemic schedule (video)
Production Weekly first reported news about the project in 2019. The script was written by Chris Goodwin and Phillip Van. There is still no news of an attachment from the director and, due to the closure caused by the pandemic, Franco says the project currently has no start date.
“We have been in development for a while, but we are getting closer and closer to pre-production,” Franco said in an interview published Wednesday with Insider.
Franco told Insider that he hopes to do “To the Extreme” along the lines of “The Disaster Artist”, the film about Tommy Wiseau and the making of “The Room”, which he co-starred with his brother James Franco.
“With that movie, people expected us to do a broad comedy where we made fun of Tommy Wiseau, but the more real we played it, the more fun and sincere it was – that’s the tone we want for this one too,” Franco said.
“To the Extreme” is also the title of Vanilla Ice’s 1990 album that included the hit single “Ice Ice Baby”, which spent 16 weeks on top of the Billboard 200 and sold 15 million copies worldwide.
While Franco is quarantined at home, he has been developing the project with Van Winkle.
“Rob is such a sweet and smart guy and he has been a great help in the process of getting all the right details and making us aware of information that the public doesn’t know,” added Franco. “Just talking to him I can’t help but think of the rabbit holes I’m going to go down to prepare for the role.”
