Johnny Depp's Tupac-Biggie thriller Labyrinth acquired by Open Road

Open Road Films is on the case. The distributor has acquired all North American rights to Labyrinth, an investigative thriller about the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. that will star Johnny Depp.

Directed by Brad Furman (The Lincoln Laywer) and set to begin production in November, Labyrinth centers on Russell Poole (Depp), a disgraced LAPD detective who has been unable to solve the slayings of the rival hip-hop artists for two decades. He eventually teams up with a reporter desperate to save his own reputation to finally uncover the truth behind Tupac and Biggie’s deaths.

Christian Contreras wrote the script, adapting Randall Sullivan’s dense nonfiction book 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.

In an announcement Monday, Open Road CEO Tom Ortenberg called the project “an edgy and timely investigative thriller.”

Miriam Segal, who collaborated with Furman on The Infiltrator, is producing Labyrinth. Open Road has also acquired rights in several international territories where it has output agreements.

Hollywood and the general public’s fascination with Tupac and Biggie endures. The former artist is the subject of the upcoming biopic All Eyez on Me, and the latter has inspired a scripted series in development at TBS.