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New Jack City was the first theatrically released film for director and co-star Mario Van Peebles. The film was based upon an original story and screenplay written by Thomas Lee Wright who had previously penned a draft of The Godfather Part III and would go on to write, direct and produce a seminal documentary of American gang life, Eight-Tray Gangster: The Making of a Crip. The screenplay was co-written by journalist-turned-screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper, who also scripted 1994's Above The Rim, and Sugar Hill, which also starred Snipes. Cooper is the first African-American screenwriter in history to not only have two films produced in one year: Sugar Hill was released on February 25, 1994 by Beacon-20th Century Fox Pictures, and Above The Rim was released on March 23, 1994 by New Line Cinema. Barry Michael Cooper's rewrite was based on a December 1987 The Village Voice cover story written by Cooper titled "Kids Killing Kids: New Jack City Eats Its Young". The story revolved around the 20th anniversary of the 1967 riots in Detroit, and in its wake, the rise of crack cocaine gangs in the mid-to-late 1980s, like Young Boys Inc., and the Chambers Brothers. |
