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L.A. Riots Movie Could Finally Happen in Wake of Rodney King's Death
Police patrol street during 1992 Los Angeles Riots. (Gary Leonard/Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection)
Earlier this year we marked the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots, and it was just a few weeks later that the man whose videotaped beating is thought to have been the volatile event's originating moment was found dead in his own swimming pool. Though a movie about the 1992 L.A. Riots has been in talks for years, with perhaps a renewed interest in the Rodney King story, comes word director Justin Lin is in negotiations to direct the film.
The movie would be done with the "Fast Five" director at the helm for producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer at Imagine Entertainment, according to Vulture, but what isn't for sure is if the script will be the one shopped around a few years back by John Ridley ("Red Tails") that was going to be made by Spike Lee.
The project fizzled, though, when the money wasn't there: “How can you scale back the LA riots?! That’s not the movie I want to make. The studio said, ‘Scale it back.’ What’s the point?” Lee told MTV in 2009, three years after they'd started prepping the film.
No word on Lin's prospective budget, should he accept the movie after finishing up "The Fast and the Furious 6," or if Lin will still do "Terminator 5" after all.
Of course, this L.A. Riots project is not be confused with 2005's L.A. Riot Spectacular, narrated by Snoop Dogg Lion, which is described as a "surreal, funny, and provocative view of the participants and psychology that fueled the epochal 1992 events."
Related
L.A. Riots 20 Years Later: New Twitter Account Revisits Pivotal Moments in Real Time
20 Years Later: 28 B&W Photos of 1992 L.A. Riots
How The L.A. Riots Got Written Into TV Plots In Fall 1992
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