Why Director John Singleton Abandoned The Tupac Shakur Film 'All Eyez On Me'

Director John Singleton bailed from the Tupac Shakur biopic, "All Eyez on Me," because the producers, frankly, didn't listen to him.

Singleton was long attached to the project, which was finally released last month, but dropped out because of creative and personal differences. And he's not looking back.

"It had to be done the way I thought it had to be done," Singleton explained. "I decided not to do it because the people that were involved were not respecting Tupac's mother Afeni. They weren't really respectful to her so that's why I decided not to do it."

The movie was eventually helmed by the lesser known director Benny Boom and received generally lousy reviews.

In many ways, Singleton was, and would have been, the perfect director for the film. He had not only directed the late rapper in his well-received 1993 film "Poetic Justice," but Singleton and Shakur covered a lot of the same ground in the early 1990s — at least until the poet's death in 1996.

They certainly would have re-connected over current events, especially during a recent spate of police killings, many of them caught on camera, Singleton suggested.

"I would hope that Black Lives Matter can be sustained as much as possible," he said. "I don't feel like activism should be a pop culture event. It should be sustainable. Look at what just happened with Philando Castile. This is not a time to be passive."

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