Open call to 'step into shoes' of Notorious B.I.G.

Last Updated: Friday, August 10, 2007 | 11:33 AM ET

CBC Arts

A biopic on the rapper Notorious B.I.G. is scheduled to begin shooting this fall, 10 years after the singer was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles.

Producers have announced an open casting call for someone to play Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace.

Notorious B.I.G., shown with Sean Combs just before his 1997 death. His biopic will be shot this fall.
(Associated Press)

Both actors and non-actors are being invited to submit audition videos online beginning at 3 a.m. ET Sunday to the movie website.

"As it relates to the individual Christopher Wallace — his looks, his stature, what he represented, the swagger, the sensibility of the man — all those elements are very difficult to find, no matter where you go," Wayne Barrow, Wallace's former manager and one of the film's producers, said Thursday.

Barrow, who is producing with another former manager, Mark Pitts, and Wallace's mother, Voletta Wallace, said the only actor considered for the role — Forest Whitaker — is too old at 46 to play Wallace, who died when he was just 25.

"We thought it would be best to open it up to the world and … give somebody the opportunity to step into his shoes and fulfill their own American dream," said Barrow.

The film, titled Notorious, has been in the works for nearly seven years and has yet to hire a director, but Barrow said a director should be named soon.

The script was written by Reggie Rock Bythewood and Cheo Hodari Coker, a hip hop journalist, who wrote the biography Unbelievable: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G.

Fox Searchlight bought rights to the story in 2005.

The rapper, who called himself Biggie, was born in Brooklyn and became a central figure in East Coast hip hop after his 1994 debut Ready to Die.

His double-disc set Life After Death was released just after his shooting and two more albums have since been released.

His murder has never been solved, though his family believes it was related to a feud within the hip hop industry.