Intense New All Eyez On Me Trailer Drops on Anniversary of Tupac’s Death

On September 7, 1996, the hip hop legend (at only 25) Tupac Shakur was shot in a drive-by shooting at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in Las Vegas, Nevada. He died six days later. Today is the 20th anniversary of his death, and with that comes the new, viscerally intense trailer for Benny Boom's Tupac biopic, All Eyez On Me. The last time we saw a teaser for the film, it was on Tupac's birthday, this past June 16. He would have been 45.

The new trailer, which opens with Tupac (Demetrius Shipp Jr.) talking about police brutality, comes amid a national conversation over San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's decision to stay kneeling during the National Anthem before games, a protest against police violence that is spreading across the NFL, college and high football. It also comes at a time in America where the conversation around race, police brutality and mass incarceration is on just about everybody's mind, making Boom's long gestating project eerily prescient. 

With an increasingly tense soundtrack, the new trailer hints at Tupac's rise, the many people pulling at him to either stay true to himself, or, to take what's his, and the nearly ambient threat that attends not only a young black man's daily life, but a young black man with the fame, fortune and reach of Tupac.  "Like all black leaders, you have a bullseye on your back," Pac's mother, Afeni Shakur  (Danai Gurira) warns him. "I ain't no black leader," he replies.

Along with Shipp Jr. and Gurira,  Jamal Woolard stars as Biggie Smalls, Kat Graham as Jada Pinkett, and Dominic L. Santana as Suge Knight. All Eyez on Me is set to open this fall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZlXHAbX3TY