HOLLYWOOD — An OJ Simpson biopic chronicling “The Juice’s” childhood, his Heisman Trophy-winning season at USC, and his array of achievements as a professional athlete, sportscaster, and actor up to June 1994, has been greenlit and will start filming later this month, according to film industry sources.
Veteran screenwriter Logan Johnson has been tapped by the Simpson estate to adapt OJ’s inspiring biography to the silver screen with a moving cinematic rendering that stops just short of some boring legal trouble The Juice had at the tail end of his life. “I plan to meld actual game footage from OJ’s playing days in college and in the NFL with modern-day actors reenacting formative moments from his private and public life,” said Johnson. “I’ve been told that as long as those formative moments have nothing to do with why OJ had no alibi for where he was when the infamous Brentwood murders happened in June of 1994, or why he behaved so oddly when a limousine driver came to pick him up on the night of the killings, or why he would go on to co-author a book titled ‘If I Did It’ a few years later, I have complete artistic freedom.”
Despite only being in pre-production, the film has already gained significant backlash online. Producer Joel Aidson recently took to Twitter to dismiss these early criticisms.
“We are by no means ‘taking it easy’ on OJ. This film will fully explore his role in the poor box office performance of ‘Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.’ Frankly, we really take him to task on that one. “
Cultural critic and film historian Elaine Varitek pointed out that this tactful omission is becoming a growing trend in biopic filmmaking.
“The recent success of the Michael Jackson biopic could very well usher in a new golden age for Hollywood profiteering off stylized reputation reboots,” said Varitek. “The families of the disgraced deceased are licking their chops right now, as it seems the viewing public is hungry for films that whitewash the tarnished legacies of the icons of what they remember as simpler times. I’m already hearing rumors of a Woody Allen Biopic that focuses exclusively on his jazz career,
At press time, the estate of Henry Kissinger is shopping for screenwriters to craft a feel-good biopic about Kissinger’s life up that stops abruptly at January 1969, when he became National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon.
