The planned Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious has found its star after an open call audition. Brooklyn-based rapper Jamal Woolard, who performs under the nom de MC Gravy, has been cast to star as B.I.G., beating out more than a hundred other Biggies who tried out for the part. Like the man he will be playing, Woolard segued from his job as a drug dealer into that of a rapper. Gravy also earned instant street cred two years ago, when he was shot in the buttocks before a radio appearance outside NY hip-hop station Hot 97’s studios, and then proceeded to brush off his wound and go inside for his interview. (more…)

Rita Marley, widow of reggae legend Bob Marley, has inked a deal with film producers the Weinstein Co. to develop, produce and distribute the first ever biopic on Marley. The film will be based on Rita’s own 2004 autobiography, titled No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley. The book is “an intimate and epic account of their relationship, which went from the streets of Trenchtown to the heights of the international music and political worlds.” Screenwriter Lizzie Borden has been recruited to pen the film adaptation, with Rita Marley serving as the movie’s executive producer. While no casting decisions have been made, Rita Marley has already expressed an interest in the Fugees‘ Lauryn Hill to portray her. “Lauryn would be ideal,” said Marley. “She sees my life as her life.” Hill is married to Bob Marley’s son from another relationship, Rohan. Rita also lobbied for her grandson Stefan to play Bob Marley because he’s a “spitting image.” The film is being touted as an “epic romance,” and will include the assassination attempt on Bob Marley’s life that resulted in Rita being shot in the head. The news of the biopic comes a month after director Martin Scorsese announced that he would produce a Bob Marley documentary, to be released on what would have been the singer’s sixty-fifth birthday on February 6, 2010. No Woman No Cry is currently scheduled for a late 2009 release.

Related Stories:

• Bob Marley and Beyond: Reggae in the Seventies and Early Eighties
• Bob Marley USB Album Release to Save Music
• Martin Scorsese Plots Bob Marley Documentary

[Photo: Boot/Retna]