Snoop Dogg Biopic Casts Its Tupac Shakur

Camron Jones will play Tupac Shakur in Snoop, Universal Pictures' biopic of Snoop Dogg, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Jones is best known for the Amazon Prime young-adult drama Panic, with additional credits on grown-ish, The Purge, and Shameless. He will also appear in the upcoming third season of Starz's P-Valley. The casting rounds out a growing ensemble: Jonathan Daviss, from Netflix's Outer Banks, plays Snoop Dogg himself; Myles Bullock takes on Dr. Dre; and Lauren London plays Snoop Dogg's mother.

Craig Brewer is directing and wrote the latest draft of the screenplay, which was initially penned by Joe Robert Cole. Brewer directed the 2005 film Hustle & Flow and recently helmed Song Sung Blue for Focus Features, Universal's specialty division. The film is produced by Imagine Entertainment's Brian Grazer and Allan Mandelbaum, alongside Snoop Dogg and Death Row Pictures president Sara Ramaker. Universal senior vice president of production development Ryan Jones oversees the project for the studio.

The inclusion of Tupac Shakur as a character gives the biopic a rich dramatic vein to mine. Snoop Dogg and Shakur were both signed to Death Row Records — the label that dominated West Coast hip-hop in the early 1990s — and collaborated on tracks including "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted." Their friendship fractured when Shakur pressed Snoop Dogg to choose a side in the West Coast–East Coast rivalry that consumed rap during that era. Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting in 1996, a moment that reverberated through the entire music world.

Shakur's life beyond music carries its own weight for the film. He appeared in films such as John Singleton's Poetic Justice and the crime drama Gridlock'd, and he served time in prison — biographical territory that, alongside the Snoop–Tupac relationship, gives Brewer dramatic material rooted in real events.

Snoop Dogg emerged from Long Beach, California, in the 1990s to become one of the most recognised names in rap. The biopic will incorporate music from his own catalogue, which gives the production access to the songs audiences associate with his career — a detail that matters when a music biopic's soundtrack can define its emotional texture as much as its script.

For fans of hip-hop history, the Snoop–Tupac dynamic is one of the most compelling chapters of the era, and the film now has the cast in place to stage it.