Spike Lee recruits hip-hop star for new movie with Denzel Washington
Rapper Ice Spice has joined the cast of Spike Lee’s upcoming movie, High and Low, which will see her link up with iconic actor Denzel Washington.
The latest news has emerged after the film was initially announced in February. It is the fifth title that Lee and leading man Washington have worked on together. 2006’s celebrated thriller Inside Man was the pair’s inaugural effort, which also starred Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, and Christopher Plummer. In addition to this outing, the pair has since collaborated on Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, and He Got Game.
The project is a significant one for the New York City rapper, as it will mark her acting debut. The news was first reported by Variety, although no further details have been provided about the role that Spice will play in the upcoming thriller. However, she has already begun shooting for the production.
The nail-biting movie commenced production in March and is an English-language reinterpretation of influential auteur Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller of the same name. Starring Toshiro Mifune, the original Japanese film was based on Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom, which follows the descent of a businessman who pays a ransom to the kidnappers of his child. The flick is one of his finest works, alongside more prominent works such as Seven Samurai and Rashomon.
The upcoming movie is a collaboration between Apple Original Films and A24. Produced by the latter, Escape Artists, and Mandalay Pictures, the script was penned by Lee and Alan Fox. It also marks Washington’s second job under the Apple Original Films banner, following Joel Coen’s monochrome 2021 adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth.
Todd Black, the mind behind The Equalizer franchise, will produce the movie for Escape, with Jason Michael Berman doing so for Mandalay Pictures. Notably, the action-thriller series has been one of Washington’s most acclaimed most recent endeavours, with the third instalment recently released. Washington and Black have also been involved in Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
No date has been set for High and Low, but production is officially underway. It will be Lee’s first outing since 2020’s Da 5 Bloods. Last September, he also moderated the Talking Heads reunion panel, following on from directing frontman David Byrne’s American Utopia in 2020.
Ice Spice is also in the midst of a busy year and released ‘Think U the Shit (Fart)’ in January and is set to appear at this year’s edition of Coachella.
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