Tupac Shakur may have been dead for the past 17 years, but his legacy has, if anything, only risen since he was gunned down in 1996. It has seemed that, ever since that fateful day, there have been rumours and rousing that Hollywood were working on turning the life of 2Pac into a feature length film, and now it looks like we may finally get to see the long-discussed biopic.

Tupac
2Pac's life has long been expected to be made into a film

On Thursday, 19 September, it was confirmed that Morgan Creek Productions and Emmet Furla Films had agreed to co-finance the film, with Shakur's mother, Afeni Shakur, signed on to executive produce. According to the Los Angeles Times, direct-to-DVD crime drama Street Kings II writers Eddie Gonzales and Jeremy Haft are already working on a script, and with Shakur's mother on board, this could finally be the 2Pac biopic that actually makes it past the pre-production stage. Previous attempts to bring Shakur's life to the screen have all fallen apart due to difficulties in negotiating creative control between producers and Shakur's mother.

But even with Ms Shakur signed on with the project, this by no mean guarantees that the project will make it to the screen. The film version of Shakur's life will need to appease both his diehard fanbase, who feel they already know everything there is to know about the genre-defining rapper, as well as pleasing his mother, who may not want all of her son's past actions to make their way on film. And with no-one in the frame to direct or star in the film yet, there is reason to be sceptical about the chances of a 2Pac film seeing the light of day.

Shakur's eventful life has already been the subject of a number of documentaries, most significantly the Oscar-nominated 2003 film Tupac: Resurrection. Training Day director Antoine Fuqua, was originally slated to direct a film version of the rapper's life and attempted to cast it in 2011, however that production was later scrapped.