Just in time for 50’s 40th birthday, he and Jake Gyllenhaal grace the cover in promotion of their latest flick Southpaw.
The boxing flick is set to hit theaters nationwide on July 24th.
Southpaw tells the story of Billy “The Great” Hope, reigning Junior Middleweight Boxing Champion of the World (Jake Gyllenhaal). Billy Hope seemingly has it all with an impressive career, a beautiful and loving wife (Rachel McAdams), an adorable daughter (Oona Laurence) and a lavish lifestyle. When tragedy strikes and his lifelong manager and friend (50 Cent) leaves, Hope hits rock bottom and turns to an unlikely savior at a run-down local gym.
With less than a month until showtime, read an excerpt of VIBE’s interview:
50, you were saying you brought VIBERobert De Niro for our Hollywood Issue cover back in 2008, now you are bringing us the young De Niro for this cover…
50 Cent: We go through generations of this shit, man. [Screams] How many generations do I have to give you? [Laughs]
Jake Gyllenhaal. Young De Niro. Speaking of which, there’s Oscar talk for him on this one.
50: I mean he deserves that conversation. When you get a chance to see the performance in the film, you’ll understand the discipline is connected to Jake’s performance in this joint. We just talked about it briefly on the side. It’s not just the physical portion of it, people identify with that because they know how difficult it is to get ready for the summertime. They’ve got personal goals of losing five or ten pounds and it’s difficult for them to make the physical change. When they see that transformation, then they’re all attracted to him. They’re talkin’ about it so much ‘cause he’s able to commit himself to the point where he’s eight months ahead of the project. You started working on it [To Jake]?
Jake Gyllenhaal: Five months intensely. Before that, it was like a year talking about it. Then getting into it how we wanted to do it and then how we did it. It was like five months.
But it was also one of those things where you had to kind of wait and see because Eminem was attached to it.
50: In the very beginning, yeah. I actually spoke to Em about the project and this was like two days ago. I talked to him and he was like, ‘Yo, Jake looks fuckin’ crazy in that movie. I’m glad it worked out the right way. It went the right way.’ When you’re around something, you’re reading it and you’re comfortable with the material. And then you actually see it on the screen and you go, ‘Damn. Look at this.’ You see all of the creative choices from the talent, from the actors….it’s connected to it. There are points where there’s a lot of improvisation in the actual script at the same time, so it’s not exactly what was on the page. When you watch it, it’s like, ‘Yo!’ It’s a whole ‘nother experience even if you’ve read the script.
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