Ice Cube teams up with Disney Studios to star as Fagin as well as slated to write the screenplay for the musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1838 novel Oliver Twist, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Oliver Twist is one of Dickens’ most famous works, which tells the tale of an orphan boy. Fagin is the old man who teaches the gang of starving kids in London the art of survival in the streets. His most popular song in the musical is “You’ve Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two.” Picture the man who once “went to the shelf and dusted off the AK” singing survival tactics in a British accent.
The story was already recreated by Disney as an animated movie, 1988’s Oliver and Company. This newest version will be a modernized musical including many genres, including hip-hop.
No stranger to family movies, Ice Cube starred in the kid-friendly Are We There Yet franchise, but we will soon see if it will be a stretch for the Compton, Calif. native to play a Dickensian old man.
