Three decades is a long time to wait for answers to burning questions like "Which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle does rapper Vanilla Ice most identify with?" and "Why did rapper Vanilla Ice insist on wearing that patently awful goatee for
years?" Finally, these and other mysteries have a shot at being solved—thanks to writer/actor Dave Franco, who has just announced that he’ll be bringing the life story of Robert Matthew Van Winkle (nom de guerre: Vanilla Ice) to the big screen. Franco will be portraying the ‘90s era hip hop artist himself—to the extreme.Ice entered the music scene in a big way in 1990 when his smash hit single "Ice Ice Baby" (written when the rapper was just 16) topped charts, flooded radio airwaves, and sent suburban kids running to the mall to get their hands on a copy of the album,
To The Extreme. Following those first heady career moments (including an eight-month-long relationship with Madonna and a lead role in the 1991 movie musical
Cool As Ice), Van Winkle went on to make far less mainstream music, struggling with bouts of depression and a string of arrests for crimes ranging from domestic assault to burglary. His most recent encounter with criminality was in 2015.[video_embed id='2000508']RELATED: Donald Glover could be coming back for more ‘Star Wars’ [/video_embed]But things are looking up for the self-identifying Juggalo. Dave and brother James Franco, the creative duo behind
The Disaster Artist, another biopic which took a sweet and somewhat gentle approach to the story of director Tommy Wiseau and his own catastrophe of a movie,
The Room. "With that movie,” Franco told
Insider, “people expected us to make a broad comedy where we make fun of Tommy Wiseau, but the more real we played it, the funnier and heartfelt it was—that's the tone we want for this one as well."The
To The Extreme project was
reportedly mentioned in trades paper,
Production Weekly, last year, though news didn't hit mainstream media until this week when Franco gave an interview with
Insider and mentioned developing the film. The initial description of the project described it as such: "From a high school dropout selling cars in Dallas to having the first hip-hop single to top the Billboard charts with 'Ice Ice Baby,' a young Vanilla Ice struggles with stardom, extortion attempts, and selling out as he makes music history."To prepare, Franco has been keeping close touch with Van Winkle, trying to get the details of his life story right. “Rob is such a sweet and intelligent guy and he’s been super helpful in the process of getting all the details correct and making us privy to information the public doesn’t know,” he said. “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.”[video_embed id='2000035']BEFORE YOU GO: Black actors sound off during Variety roundtable on racism in Hollywood [/video_embed]
