O’Shea Jackson Jr. is set to star in a still-untitled biopic about Major League Baseball player Dock Ellis.
The biopic, according to Variety, will be based on Joey Poach’s spec script “Dock,” with Dock Ellis’ son, Dock Ellis III, to consult. David Permut, Jeff Kwatinetz and Ice Cube are set to produce.
This is the first project for the partnership that Cube recently announced between Cube Vision, his production company, and Kelvin Wu’s AID Partners, a Hong Kong media investment company.
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Ellis played in the major leagues for 12 years and went to two World Series before he retired. He was an advocate for African-American players and worked to continue the legacy of Jackie Robin in the ongoing fight for equality in baseball.
He gained notoriety after his retirement in 1979 when he admitted that he had never pitched a game sober and that he had once pitched a no-hitter game while high on LDS. Ultimately, he sought out treatment in order to recover from his addictions and then dedicated the rest of his life to counseling others who suffered from the same problems, particularly athletes.
He died in 2008 of a liver disease when he was 63 years old.