Travis Scott Producing Biopic on Late Hip-Hop Legend DJ Screw

A new movie about DJ Screw is in development at Columbia Pictures, and hip-hop star Travis Scott has joined the project as an executive producer. Deadline reports that the film is moving forward with Isaac Yowman also on board to direct. The news comes days ahead of the 22nd anniversary of DJ Screw’s death. Yowman said Scott came on board after learning about their shared love for the late rap legend.

“When I went up to the LA office with my bro Earl, and the entire Cactus Jack team was there,” Yowman explains. “Trav and I talked over an hour about how epic this could be… bouncing ideas. The love for Screw was mutual, and he told me I had his full support. We’re both raised in Mo. City so this means that much more to have him be a part.”

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Michelle Wheeler, DJ Screw’s sister, also supports the project. She describes how exhilarating it has been to witness the process of her late brother having his life story told for a long-overdue biopic. She credits Scott and Sony, which owns Columbia Pictures, for getting the gears turning on the feature film.

“Continuing the legacy of my brother is most important,” she said. “The process honestly has been exciting. I’m like wow, we’re really about to make a movie. Nearly a dozen film directors and producers had approached us over the years, but this was the first time I actually felt fully comfortable. I’m very thankful for Sony and Travis being on this journey with us, helping keep my brother Screw’s legacy going.”

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DJ Screw was an innovator known for coining the “chopped and screwed” technique, at one point heading the Houston hip-hop group Screwed Up Click. Through hundreds of mixtapes, he garnered an appreciation in the hip-hop community before his untimely death due to an overdose in the year 2000; he was just 29 years old. In subsequent years, DJ Screw has garnered more posthumous fame with more audiences discovering his work. A biopic would obviously give the late artist his most exposure yet.

Great research has been done to help accurately tell DJ Screw’s story. Yowman says the production is including the DJ’s sister Michelle as well as his brother Charles, and there have also been meetings with other names in the business who knew him, such as Lil’ Keke, Bun B, and D-Reck.

“There’s been so much work done over the last year,” Yowman says. “The studio and I, alongside Travis’s team, have been connecting with writers — identifying the best way to tell this story on paper. Screw is a music icon, in the South he’s like a God, so there’s a level of delicacy when tapping into his story.

A release date has not yet been set for the untitled DJ Screw movie, nor have any cast members yet been revealed. With the project moving along in pre-production, more information should be soon forthcoming.

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