On Tuesday, at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, the FX network announced that the late Rapper Tupac Shakur and his mother, Afeni Shakur, will be the focus of an upcoming five-part documentary. Outlaw: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur, directed by Allen Hughes, will recount the story of a mother and son, as told by the people who knew them best.
FX CEO John Landgraf went on to tell reporters at TCA:
“There’s a ton of music and a ton of material, but there’s also an unbelievably fascinating biography, which is really a biography about Tupac’s mother and father and how he grew up in various places with them. [Shakur] is a very fascinating man and a very complicated artist. I think the kinds of stories that appeal to us are the ones that have characters at the center of them but they’re also about humanity in a really broad way. They’re about big, profound ideas about art and society.”
FX has also announced five more documentary projects as part of an expansion into non-fiction programming, with air dates yet to be announced. The other documentaries in the works are:
- Hip-Hop Untold, a six-part examination of America’s criminalization of the genre and fascination with the street culture that exists within it.
- Pride, a six-part series chronicling the fight for LGBTQ rights in America, as seen through the lens of our national history, and the biggest pop culture and political events.
- A Wilderness of Terror, a six-part documentary series based on Errol Morris’ novel of the same name about an army sergeant who is sent to prison for killing his family. The plot twist: He’s probably innocent.
- Women in Comedy, a feature-length documentary by director Andrea Nevins examining the changing landscape for women in stand-up through intimate interviews and the examination of their groundbreaking art in the post-#MeToo era.
- The Most Dangerous Animal of All, A four-part documentary based on Gary L. Stewart’s search for his birth father, as chronicled in his best-selling book; The Most Dangerous Animal of All. SPOILER: The book is most known for the fact that after a year of searching, Stewart came to believe that his biological father was the notorious serial murderer known as the Zodiac Killer.
