A biopic of Afeni Shakur, the late mother of rapper Tupac Shakur and a revered member of the Black Panther Party, is in the works.
Titled Peace, Love and Respect; the Afeni Shakur/Panther 21 story, the biopic will hail from Amaru Entertainment and the Shakur Estate. A Different World star Jasmine Guy will executive produce alongside writer/director Jamal Joseph, a former member of The Black Panther Party.
According the exclusive report from Variety, the biopic will span a pivotal two-year period from 1969 to 1971. The biopic will implement various flashbacks to Shakur’s childhood and teenage years, from when Shakur and 20 other Black Panthers were arrested and charged with conspiracy to bomb police stations in New York to the birth of her son Tupac on June 16, 1971,.
“When the trial started, Afeni had gotten pregnant when she was out on bail,” says producer Dina LaPolt, who has worked with the Shakur Estate for years. “Two of the Panthers absconded, the judge freaked out and Afeni got put back in jail. She was five months pregnant [with Tupac] and made a motion to get a glass of milk for her unborn child! She had a lot of self-confidence, and that’s our movie — it begins with the day she was arrested.”
This will mark the second biopic to chronicle a member of the Shakur family. In 2017, the autobiographical drama All Eyez On Me chronicled the life of late rapper Tupac Shakur, who was portrayed by Demetrius Shipp Jr. The film also starred Kat Graham, Lauren Cohan, Hill Harper, Danai Gurira and Jamal Woolard. Tupac was also a portrayed by Marcc Rose in the USA Network limited series, Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G.
Afeni Shakur will also be the subject of the upcoming FX docuseries from Allen Hughes, Outlaw: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur. The five-part, “cinematic television” event is described as “an intimate wide-angle portrait of the most inspiring and dangerous mother-son duo in American history, whose unified message of freedom, equality, persecution and justice are more relevant today than ever.”
