Disney Set To Finance And Distribute Ice Cube's Car Movie 'Chrome And Paint'

The last time we talked about Ice Cube he wanted to go back to his roots by making Chrome and Paint, an R-rated story set in the custom car culture of South Central LA. He still wants to direct the film as well as star in it — this would be his first dramatic directorial project in more than a decade — and now he's got a studio ready to finance and distribute it. But because that studio is Disney, and so a few things are likely to change.

Deadline says that the script, by Ice Cube and Eva Vives, "uses the subculture of tricked out Mercedes, BMW and Low Rider cars to frame a drama about the temptation to place materialism above all else." So it has cars and a moral lesson. Awesome?

But because Disney is behind the film, it will now be a PG-13 film rather than an R. So much for being a gritty film in the mold of Boyz N' the Hood, which is how the film was initially pitched. But really, Ice Cube had all his rough edges filed down years ago, and he's been in full-on family movie fold for some time. So it's not like this represents some serious change from the way he's been working for quite a while. And the whole idea of setting a story in the LA custom car culture is so tired that you could write the story using a meme generator, but as a thing that can teach lessons about materialism to kids, maybe it has a little bit of gas. (OK, probably not.)

Rewrites will be done to the script while Ice Cube does his work on 21 Jump Street. And his co-writer Eva Vives is now part of the Disney Writing Fellowship Program, which mentors new screenwriters; she'll work on Chrome and Paint as part of that program.