Beenie Man to co-write, star in movie

Dancehall artiste Moses Davis is taking his career to a new level. Having proven time and again that he is indeed the ‘King of the Dancehall’, through the many accolades he has received throughout the years, the Doctor, Beenie Man, now has his eyes set on the big screen.

“I am a movie fanatic,” he told Splash. “I have played roles in movies before, but this time it will be different, because this time I am a part of the production, from beginning to end. We just finish writing the script and then another set of people going to write the dialogue,” he explained.

The ‘we’ he refers to include himself and record producer-turned-movie-producer Trenten Gumbs and his brother Richard, from 3-G Films, the engine behind the soon-to-be-released, all-Jamaican-cast movie, Cop and a Badman. The brothers were in the island recently to shoot videos for their latest movie and complete the script-writing process for the upcoming flick with Beenie Man.

In an interview with Splash last week, Trenten spoke of Beenie Man’s dedication to the project and lauded his decision to come on board as an investor in the production of the movie.

“Beenie, who is co-writing on this project, is like a Eddie Murphy or a Michael Jackson . he puts 100% into his art and that is really so commendable. He’s relentless and so focused when it comes to work. We’ve been working really long hours to complete the script, and at the same time he’s doing his studio work and making really good music. I’ve heard some of his new stuff and it is really very good,” said Trenten Gumbs.

And he should know something about music, having worked with record companies such as Sony, Motown, Warner Bros and artistes like Michael Jackson, Eddie Murphy and Shabba Ranks. Actually, his first visit to Jamaica was to work on that famous video shoot in the 90s which featured Shabba Ranks and Eddie Murphy in Port Antonio.

Quite excited about their upcoming project, which, in addition to Beenie, also stars Ninjaman, Oliver Samuels, Glen Campbell (“and Beenie Man says we must have Lady Saw”), this is actually the Gumb brothers fourth film, the others being Rude Boy, Is It Worth It/Gangster’s Paradise and, the most recent, Cop and a Badman, which was shot on location in LA.

This new flick, which Beenie tells us “is called Kingston”, is an action movie. “We will be shooting in Kingston and I am going to be one of the stars in it,” an upbeat Beenie Man declared.

“It’s about a ghetto youth who rip off some people and then a whole heap of things happen to him . but we can’t tell oonu too much right now,” Beenie Man said.

“But we going to work with Jamaican actors . lots of play and pantomime going on so we have enough actors and dancers for the movie right here in Jamaica,” the man who’s making his movie-writing debut announced.

Asked if the movie will feature any aspect of his own life, the deejay laughed, but actually Trenten had disclosed earlier that “some parts of the script were so close to what actually took place in Beenie’s own life experience that we had to go in and charge it.” And the uncanny thing, he said, is that they had started working on the script long before any of Beenie’s drama unfolded.

But then, didn’t we always say that Beenie Man’s life is the stuff of which movies are made?

Source: JamaicaObserve