ESPN Films has announced plans to air a much-discussed documentary about the night legendary rapper Tupac Shakur was killed in a hail of gunfire in Las Vegas in 1996, after attending a Mike Tyson fight.
One Night in Vegas will be included in the new season of ESPN's "30 For 30" series, which also includes documentaries on sports icons including Martina Navratilova to the late George Steinbrenner. Esteemed filmmakers Ron Shelton, John Singleton and Alex Gibney contributed to the project.
The film focuses on the night of Sept. 7, 1996, when Tupac was tragically shot and killed in Vegas. The star had just attended the Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon boxing match, which Tyson won in typical first-round fashion for that stage of his career. Shakur was riddled with bullets as his car drove away from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. A still-unknown assailant fired 13 rounds at his vehicle at close range, hitting him twice and puncturing his lung.
The volatile slugger and the iconic rapper were friends, as Tyson has revealed in interviews, and the two were planning to attend an after-party together that evening to celebrate Tyson's victory. Reggie Rock Bythewood, a writer/director from New York, has pored over the story for years, and with One Night in Vegas he aims to connect the world of sports with the culture of Hip Hop using the friendship between Tyson and Tupac as a focal point.
"I am extremely excited that ESPN will allow me to hold a mirror up to the boxing world, a mirror up to Hip Hop, and ultimately, a mirror up to society," the director said in a statement.
Tyson, who gave the film his blessing, opened up to MTV last month about his time with the hero MC:
"He looked very destructive. He came across as a world beater," Tyson said. "As far as his music was concerned, his presence and his energy ... the word I'm looking for is fearless. He came across as fearless. When you come across somebody that's fearless, you're a little bit in awe. You're like. 'Whoa!' He's ready to blow, too, at any moment; very volatile. He's very focused. He can go from one second to the next and get very focused."
Tyson described their personal discussions as "purely emotionally intimate talking; expression of feeling. He was very prolific in expressing himself. He had a lot of hostility. I think it was just misguided and misdirected. It was obvious he was a genius, he was a prodigy. Whoa! He was just amazing as far as his energy was concerned. He was explosive — like a black panther ready to pounce."
One Night in Vegas is scheduled to air on Sept. 7, 2010, exactly 14 years after Tupac's death.
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