Snoop Dogg, Death Row Pictures, Announce August 2027 Release for Life Story

Snoop Dogg will produce his own upcoming biographical film, "Snoop," through his Death Row Pictures banner. The Universal Pictures movie, starring Jonathan Daviss as the Long Beach rapper, is scheduled to arrive in theaters in August 2027. (Courtesy photo)

More than three decades after Death Row Records introduced Snoop Doggy Dogg to the world, Snoop Dogg is helping decide how Hollywood tells the story.

Universal Pictures will release “Snoop,” a biographical film about the Long Beach rapper’s life and career, nationwide on Aug. 6, 2027. Jonathan Daviss, best known as Pope Heyward on Netflix’s “Outer Banks,” will play Snoop in the title role.

Craig Brewer, whose films include “Hustle & Flow” and “Dolemite Is My Name,” will direct from his rewrite of a screenplay originally written by Joe Robert Cole. Cole’s credits include “Black Panther” and “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”

Snoop will produce the film with Imagine Entertainment founder Brian Grazer and Death Row Pictures President Sara Ramaker. Universal said the movie will incorporate music from Snoop’s catalog.

That arrangement gives the project something most music biopics spend years trying to secure: the artist, the songs and the company carrying the history under the same roof.

“Snoop” will be the first film released through Death Row Pictures’ overall deal with NBCUniversal Entertainment. The project turns a label name once associated with Snoop’s turbulent rise into a vehicle for preserving — and potentially reframing — that history.

Snoop acquired the Death Row Records brand in 2022, nearly three decades after releasing his debut album through the label. He has since expanded Death Row into music, merchandise, gaming and visual entertainment rather than attempting to operate it solely as a replica of its 1990s incarnation.

“We’re building Death Row into avenues that didn’t exist,” Snoop told The Associated Press in 2024.

A theatrical film about his life may be the clearest example yet.

The movie was initially announced in 2022 with Allen Hughes attached to direct. Brewer later took over the project and revised Cole’s script. Snoop previously appeared in Brewer’s “Dolemite Is My Name,” the 2019 Eddie Murphy film about comedian and independent filmmaker Rudy Ray Moore.

NBCUniversal introduced Daviss and Snoop together at CinemaCon in Las Vegas in April. The studio said filming was expected to begin in Los Angeles this summer.

Snoop framed the movie as a continuation of the story Universal began telling with its 2015 N.W.A film, “Straight Outta Compton.”

“After my brothers got to tell their story with ‘Straight Outta Compton,’ now it’s my turn,” he told the CinemaCon audience.

Snoop appeared briefly in “Straight Outta Compton,” where LaKeith Stanfield portrayed him as a young rapper entering Dr. Dre’s orbit. “Snoop” will be the first major studio movie centered on his full life rather than treating him as part of someone else’s rise.

The challenge will not be finding enough story.

Born Calvin Broadus Jr., Snoop first reached a national audience in 1992 through Dr. Dre’s “Deep Cover” and “The Chronic.” His voice — laid-back, melodic and immediately recognizable — cut through Dre’s production without needing to compete with it.

His 1993 debut, “Doggystyle,” opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and became a defining release of the G-funk era. The Recording Industry Association of America has certified the album quadruple platinum.

At the same time, Snoop was facing a murder charge that threatened to reduce the career to a brief and violent chapter. A Los Angeles jury acquitted Snoop and his bodyguard, McKinley Lee, of murder charges in 1996. Both men also were acquitted of conspiracy to commit assault.

Snoop later described the verdict as a turning point. He told the AP that the experience pushed him to separate himself from people and behavior that could have sent him back to prison or ended his life.

What followed was one of hip-hop’s most unusual reinventions.

Snoop outlasted Death Row’s original collapse, recorded for Master P’s No Limit Records and moved through multiple generations of rap without losing the voice or mannerisms that made him famous. His public life eventually expanded into acting, youth football, cooking television, Olympic coverage, commercials and “The Voice.”

That range makes the eventual shape of “Snoop” an open question.

Universal has not announced the supporting cast or disclosed how much of Snoop’s life the film will cover. The studio also has not said whether the story will remain focused on his Long Beach and Death Row years or follow him through No Limit, his mainstream reinvention and his eventual return as Death Row’s owner.

Snoop’s involvement gives the filmmakers access to his memories and music. It does not yet answer the question that follows every artist-authorized biography: how much of the difficult history will make it to the screen.

The film’s current team suggests that music will not be treated as background decoration. Brewer built “Hustle & Flow” around the process of making a rap record and directed Murphy in “Dolemite Is My Name,” a story about a Black entertainer financing and protecting his own vision when the established industry had little interest in it.

Grazer produced “8 Mile,” while Universal released “Straight Outta Compton.” NBCUniversal Chair Donna Langley has described “Snoop” as a spiritual cousin to the N.W.A film.

This time, however, the artist is not waiting for a studio to decide that his history has value.