50 Cent Loses Battle With Nigerian Novelist Chinua Achebe Over The Title 'Things Fall Apart'

Things Fall Apart For 50 Cent Over Book Title

50 Cent's new movie has been forced to back down in a legal battle with representatives of the 80-year-old Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe.

The rapper, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, had called his movie Things Fall Apart - the same title as Achebe's most famous novel, which was included on the list of Time magazine's All Time Top 100 Novels. Chinua Achebe continues to write, and is currently professor of Africana Studies at Brown University in Rhode Island.

The movie's producers allegedly offered $1m for the rights to the title. Though Achebe himself has been silent on the issue, Naijan, a Nigerian news website, reports that a spokesman for Achebe's Foundation, which manages his works, informed producers that "the novel with the said title was initially produced in 1958 (that is 17 years before rapper 50 Cent was born), listed as the mostly read book in modern African literature, and won’t be sold for even $1bn.”

According to PopEater (now HuffPost Celebrity), the movie was "written by 50 and [is] loosely based on the life of his childhood best friend. [In the movie] the rapper-turned-actor goes from a dread-locked NFL hopeful to an emaciated cancer victim." The film stars Ray Liotta alongside 50 Cent, and is directed by Mario Van Peebles, who also appears in the movie.

Hollywood Reporter writes that the movie is currently slated for an early 2012 release.

See below to watch the trailer for the movie:

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