Dave Franco is set to portray ’90s rapper Vanilla Ice in an upcoming biopic, reported Insider .
“We have been in development for a while but we are inching closer and closer to preproduction,” he said.
The project was first referenced in 2019, in the trade publication, Production Weekly . The film has been titled To The Extreme , with a script written by Chris Goodwin and Phillip Van.
The tagline describes the life of a young Vanilla Ice, from “a high school dropout selling cars in Dallas” to becoming the first hip-hop artist to top the Billboard charts with his single “Ice Ice Baby.”
The track sold 15 million copies worldwide and spent 16 weeks atop the Billboard 100.
Franco has expressed he wants the tone of To The Extreme to be similar to The Disaster Artist , in which he appeared alongside his brother, James Franco. He said people were expecting them to make fun of director and star Tommy Wiseau, but they veered in another direction.
“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.
He revealed he had been speaking to Vanilla Ice, real name Rob Van Winkle, on the phone. He described him as “a sweet and intelligent guy.”
“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.”
He added that Ice had been very useful in providing details for the movie.
Production is currently on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Franco admitted he hadn’t reached the point where he was constantly listening to the seminal Vanilla Ice album, which shares the same name as the project, or watching Cool As Ice , which was the artist’s movie feature debut.
Franco recently released his directorial debut, The Rental, starring his wife, Alison Brie , as part of two couples who experience a horrific experience at an AirBnB.
He said the film was inspired by his own paranoia regarding home sharing, saying he was inspired by how readily people will stay in the home of a stranger as long as they have a five-star review.
He also admitted that he and Brie had taken MDMA during the film’s production, in order to emulate a scene in the movie, as reported by The Inquisitr . He revealed the couple had taken the drug the first night they met.
“Cut to eight-and-a-half years later and we’ve never been happier,” he said.