When he’s not penning op-eds on Hollywood’s shortsightedness for The Hollywood Reporter, John Singleton moonlights as a director, in case you weren’t aware.
Singleton has teamed up with Showtime and writer Eric Amadio to develop a 1980s-set crack cocaine era drama titled Snowfall, which is described succinctly, if reductively, as “Boyz n the Hood meets The Wire.”
The drama will explore what has been come to be known as the American crack epidemic – the surge of crack cocaine across the USA (specifically Los Angeles in this case) during the mid to late 1980s.
An “origin” story, at the center of the drama will be: a young black kid from Compton, CA who will grow to become the world’s first “superstar” drug dealer, a Mexican wrestler, and a CIA agent charged with laundering money for the Contras.
Singleton will co-write and exec produce the drama, as well as direct the pilot.
He’s also attached to direct the long-in-development Tupac Shakur biopic, and previously teamed up with Russell Simmons on an HBO project called Club Life: Miami – a drama that’s said to be set against the South Beach club scene and follows a reformed criminal who moves to Miami and gains a new lease on life as he embraces the vibrant, youthful and transgressive world.
Singleton will write, and will executive produce the project along with Simmons.