Image via Complex Original
Straight Outta Compton, which premiered in theaters nationwide last week, has proven an unexpected critical and commercial success. The film has achieved the largest opening weekend box office earnings for an R-rated August debut, and viewers love it way more than they loved Notorious, that's for sure.
Knowing Hollywood's knack for bleeding their best (and worst) franchises dry, we're going to go ahead and assume that executives at Legendary Pictures are figuring out how to spool Compton into at least five prequels, sequels, and spin-offs right now. We decided to do their jobs for them—below, we went ahead and developed five movie pitches that would further dramatize the characters, events, and hip-hop history depicted in Straight Outta Compton.
Welcome to the Extended Compton Universe (you can call it the ECU).
Justin Charity is a staff writer for Complex. Follow him @BrotherNumpsa.
What's My Name?
The plentiful talent and general tumult of mainstream, West Coast hip-hop in the early 1990s has, in retrospect, allowed 2Pac's solo peak to overshadow the earlier rise of Snoop Dogg, the Long Beach prodigy who wrote most of Dr. Dre's The Chronic, released in 1992, and then dropped his own landmark, debut album, Doggystyle, while standing trial for murder in 1993. Snoop Dogg wasn't just the West Coast's Dre-selected successor to Ice Cube; Snoop was the biggest, most unexpectedly spectacular rapper that the genre had produced at that point. While Snoop's broad cultural relevance is interminable, What's My Name might choose to conclude with Snoop's dramatic acquittal in 1996, nine months before Tha Doggfather flopped, and seven months before the assassination of Tupac Shakur.
Daz & Kurupt: Dogg Pound Origins
For heads only: Dogg Pound Origins would account for the sprawl of deep cut acquaintances that round out the album credits on The Chronic and Dr. Dre Presents...The Aftermath—guys like Daz Dillinger, Kurupt, Warren G, Nate Dogg, Lady of Rage, RBX, Michel'le, maybe even Tairrie B! Ideally, Dogg Pound Origins would dig a bit deeper than Straight Outta Compton into the post-crash rehabilitation of the D.O.C., and the assembly of Dr. Dre's post-N.W.A posse, offering a landscape narrative that would culminate with the emergence of Snoop Dogg, the release of The Chronic, and Dre's founding Death Row Records with Suge Knight in 1991.
All Eyez On Me
How did Baltimore art school poet and Digital Underground dancer Tupac Shakur become the biggest gangsta rapper of a generation filled with superstar gangsta rappers? It's a long and potentially profitable story. Where Snoop Dogg's origin story would chronicle the rise and traumas of a reluctant superstar, All Eyez On Me would track 2Pac through his childhood, his earliest experimentation with music, his becoming an impassioned, radicalized mind, and the sexual assault trial that imperiled his credibility and career. The movie would conclude with the infamous shooting and robbery of 2Pac at Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan in 1994, leaving us at a cliffhanger in anticipation of the franchise's climactic film, Welcome to Death Row.
Welcome to Death Row
All these origin stories would converge, of course, with Welcome to Death Row, the story of Dr. Dre's resurgence as the founder of Death Row Records, the West Coast/East Coast feud, the climax of 2Pac's life and career, and the downfall of Death Row Records. By far the darkest of these five proposed story arcs, Welcome to Death Row would pit Dr. Dre against Suge Knight, Death Row against Bad Boy, 2Pac against all odds, and hip-hop against itself. Suge Knight will be shown beating his Death Row employees in exponentially inventive ways, the film would climax with the assassination of 2Pac in Las Vegas in 1996, and then Dr. Dre will flee Death Row, as Luke and Leia flee Cloud City at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.
The Aftermath
Dr. Dre is wandering alone in a desert. Once again, he's disillusioned with former business partners who squeezed him out of his own musical enterprise. He founds a new record label and releases a compilation album, Dr. Dre Presents...The Aftermath, which flops. Dr. Dre is exhausted. Dr. Dre is down for the count. Then he meets Eminem and reconciles with Snoop, who's at a similar creative impasse, and the surviving members of N.W.A, including Ice Cube and MC Ren. With Eminem under his wing and Snoop Dogg back in his corner, Aftermath would chronicle Dr. Dre's last hurrah of the 20th century. And just like that, Straight Outta Compton is a multi-billion dollar franchise. Just wait for Phase 3 of ECU—that's when stuff gets really good.