Apple’s new Apple Music streaming division did not have to look too far for the subject of its first TV project. According the Hollywood Reporter, it is none other than Dr Dre, the music and film producer who made hundreds of millions when the technology giant purchased Beats headphones and streaming service Dre, started with Jimmy Iovine.
According to the film trade magazine, the six-part Dre biopic, titled Vital Signs, will be a dark semi-autobiographical drama starring and executive-produced by, yes, Dr Dre.
The show is not expected to be, technically at least, a comedy. It features violence and sex and at least one orgy, and is being directed by music video director Paul Hunter, best known for helming hip-hop videos for Pharrell, Jennifer Lopez and Snoop Dogg.
Robert Munic, a producer-writer behind Empire, is the writer of all six episodes. The technology giant is said to be planning to roll out all six episodes at the same time.
Still, the choice of subject leaves Apple open to criticism that it could have looked farther for a debut subject. Last year Dre, 50, whose real name is Andre Young, was one of the producers behind Straight Outta Compton, the $200m-grossing music biopic of NWA, the gangsta rap supergroup that Dre produced in the early 90s.
After the film’s release last summer, the film came under fire for glossing over NWA’s misogyny and Dre’s physical abuse of women. Dre issued an apology, explaining that he was, at the time of incidents, “a young man drinking too much and with no real structure in my life”.
“I apologize to the women I’ve hurt,” he added. “I deeply regret what I did and know that it has forever impacted all of our lives.”
