Ice Cube To Make Film About Dock Ellis LSD No-Hitter
Ice Cube is about to bring one of baseball’s most famously shocking games to the big screen.
Forty-Seven years ago, on June 12, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter while high on LSD, and the filmmaker and rapper is gearing up to retell the story as a motion picture with his son, O’Shea Jackson, Jr. (Straight Outta Compton) starring in the role as Ellis, Yahoo reports.
Ice Cube alongside David Permut and Jeff Kwatinetz are currently producing the film from a script written by Joey Poach, and they’re currently scouting directors.
The movie is the first project that will be a product of Ice Cube’s Cube Vision’s strategic partnership with AID Partners, a media investment company founded by Hong Kong entrepreneur Kelvin Wu.
The partnership consists of Cube Vision developing its own portfolio, hiring its own screenwriters, and fully developing projects. Dock Ellis will be a meaty character to portray, as he was a highly competitive eccentric character, who called out racism during his baseball career.
For example, he used to wear rollers in his hair during his baseball workouts, and he was forbidden to do so by the MLB Commissioner. Although the pitcher complied, Ellis also pointed out the hypocrisy of the MLB, while the league allowed a white baseball player to wear a shoulder-length toupee during the same time.
Cube Vision helped produce the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton which garnered huge success at the box office and even earned an Oscar nomination. No Mas has already produced a short 4-minute long animated film that features Ellis himself telling the story of his no-hitter to a few radio producers before he died in 2008 (check it out above).
Glennisha Morgan is a Detroit-bred multimedia journalist and writer. She writes about intersectionality, hip-hop, pop culture, queer issues, race, feminism, and her truth. Follow her on Twitter.
