Yo, VIP, let’s kick it! Dave Franco will play rapper Vanilla Ice in an upcoming biopic titled “To the Extreme,” TheWrap has confirmed with the actor’s reps.
“To the Extreme” centers on the rise of the rapper (whose real name is Robert Van Winkle) from a high school dropout selling cars in Dallas to having the first hip-hop single to top the Billboard charts with “Ice Ice Baby.” A young Vanilla Ice struggles with stardom, extortion attempts and selling out as he makes music history.
Production Weekly first reported the news about the project back in 2019. The script was written by Chris Goodwin and Phillip Van. There is no news of a director attachment yet and due to the shutdown brought about by the pandemic, Franco says the project currently has no start date.
“We have been in development for a while but we are inching closer and closer to preproduction,” said Franco in an interview published Wednesday with Insider.
Franco told Insider that he hopes to make “To the Extreme” in the vein of “The Disaster Artist,” the film about Tommy Wiseau and the making of “The Room,” which he co-starred in alongside his brother James Franco.
“With that movie, people expected us to make a broad comedy where we make fun of Tommy Wiseau, but the more real we played it, the funnier and heartfelt it was — that’s the tone we want for this one as well,” said Franco.
“To the Extreme” is also the title of Vanilla Ice’s 1990 album that included the hit single “Ice Ice Baby,” which spent 16 weeks atop the Billboard 200 and sold 15 million copies worldwide.
While Franco remains quarantined at home, he has been developing the project with Van Winkle.
“Rob is such a sweet and intelligent guy and he’s been super helpful in the process of getting all the details correct and making us privy to information the public doesn’t know,” added Franco. “Just talking to him I can’t help but think about the rabbit holes I’m going to go down to get ready for the role.”