Johnny Depp to Star in Notorious B.I.G.-Tupac Thriller ‘Labyrinth’

After playing gangster Whitey Bulger in last year’s Black Mass, Johnny Depp is once again taking on a true-life figure, this time on the opposite side of the law.

Depp is attached to play Russell Poole, the Los Angeles police detective who investigated the murders of rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, in Labyrinth, sources have confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. 

Brad Furman, the Lincoln Lawyer helmer, is attached to direct the project, which hails from Good Films, the company behind Bryan Cranston crime drama The Infiltrator.

Screen Daily first reported the news. UTA and WME Global are co-repping U.S. rights. Good Universe is repping international sales.

Christian Contreras wrote the screenplay adapting LAbyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implication of Death Row Records’ Suge Knight, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal.

Poole was a decorated detective who spent months investigating the murder of B.I.G., real name Christopher Wallace, eventually coming to believe that a group of “gangsta cops in his own force were not only involved but were also tied to Death Row Records and the Bloods street gang.” The result was confrontations with the LAPD police chief and culminated with Poole going into early retirement in protest.

Although his turn in Black Mass netted some of his strongest reviews in years, Depp has endured a difficult summer inside and outside the theater, with his ongoing and very public divorce to Amber Heard and starring in one of the summer’s biggest bombs, Alice Through the Looking Glass. 

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