Snoop Dogg is getting his own biopic, from Menace II Society‘s Allen Hughes

Snoop Dogg is getting his own biopic, with Deadline reporting that Universal Pictures—which previously, briefly touched on his life with F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton—has tapped Allen Hughes to direct an authorized film about the life of the rapper, actor, and entrepreneur, born Calvin Broadus, Jr.

The film, set to be written by Black Panther and Wakanda Forever’s Joe Robert Cole, is the first production from Death Row Pictures, a studio Snoop formed after acquiring Death Row Records earlier this year. In announcing the film, Snoop talked about taking his time finding the right creative team to tackle the project: “I waited a long time to put this project together because I wanted to choose the right director, the perfect writer, and the greatest movie company I could partner with that could understand the legacy that I’m trying to portray on screen, and the memory I’m trying to leave behind.” Then he said this weird thing: “It was the perfect marriage. It was holy matrimony, not holy macaroni.”

And, honestly, that quote kind of encapsulates what’s fascinating about this whole concept, in so far as there’s a pretty major gulf between the dad joke-cracking image Snoop Dogg presents in 2022, and the various ways he’s comported himself in previous decades, raising a whole bunch of questions about what an “authorized” biopic of his life will look like. Will the film address the time he was accused of, and then acquitted for, murder? His open (and proud) conversations about working as a procurer of sex workers? The recent sexual assault allegations against him? We bring these things up, not in a spirit of judgment, but just to highlight how far afield Snoop Dogg’s public reputation has traveled over the last 30 years, a pretty daunting topic for any film to try to encompass.

Admittedly, Hughes has the bona fides: As half of The Hughes Brothers (with his twin Albert), Allen Hughes was foundational to filming rap culture; he later asserted his solo credentials with HBO’s 2017 docuseries The Defiant Ones, covering the relationship between Jimmy Iovine and Snoop’s old friend and mentor Dr. Dre. He’s also currently working on Dear Mama, a docuseries about the life of Tupac Shakur.