Despite having a strong opening weekend, the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez On Me is under a lot of pressure from pretty much all sides.
As we previously reported, Jada Pinkett-Smith and 50 Cent have both publicly slammed the film, with Pinkett-Smith calling the film "deeply hurtful" and pointed a number of inaccuracies in the film. Meanwhile, John Singleton - who directed Tupac Shakur in the 1993 film, Poetic Justice, and had written several drafts of a biopic screenplay with the help of Afeni Shakur - has been pretty vocal about his problems with the finished product. In an interview earlier this week, Singleton said All Eyez On Me was "worse than the Aaliyah biopic", in reference to the Lifetime movie which received overwhelming negative reviews and was slammed by Aaliyah's family.
On top of all this, the film's box office figures have dropped by 85% on its second weekend and a federal lawsuit has been filed against the film's producers for copyright infringement. Kevin Powell, who was a journalist for Vibe and conducted extensive interviews with Tupac Shakur throughout the '90s, is claiming that his interviews and writings were "lifted, without proper credit or compensation of any kind to me, and used in All Eyez On Me."
Lionsgate have so far released no statement on the matter, however Powell is seeking to have the film pulled from cinemas and - if the lawsuit goes further - stop any further release of the film.
The film is due for release here in Ireland next Friday and has so far not been screened for critics.
Via Deadline