There are a ton of films out there about the B-Boy or breakdancing culture, but most are entrenched firmly in the 1980s during it's heyday. Breakin'(and it's hilarious named sequel Electric Boogaloo), Beat Street, Wild Style....these are some of the most memorable, but not necessarily the best in my opinion. The greatest B-Boy movies showed how breakin' related to all the other major elements of the hip hop movement, including DJing and graffiti. For that, look to a movie like Style Wars or maybe even Scratch.
Lately, breakdancing has become less fringe and more mainstream. Just look at the breakdancing scene in a movie like Zoolander, or the way it's melded into a franchise like Step Up. But for those who still consider themselves hardcore B-boys, there's still one event which remains mostly untouched(some might argue with that), and that's the Battle of the Year competition. Well forget that now, as Screen Gems has been putting together Planet B-Boy, a film about the annual competition, and today they announced the start of principle photography as well as the complete cast listing.
Josh Holloway(Lost), Josh Peck(The Wackness), Laz Alonso(Jumping the Broom), Caity Lotz, and Chris Brown(Takers) will star in the flick, directed by Benson Lee. Lee directed the 2007 documentary of the same name which turned out to be the introduction to the competition for a lot of people.
The film centers on an all-star team of American B-boys preparing to compete in the Battle of the Year world championships in France. Shooting will take place in Los Angeles and France. No release date has been set as of yet.
Yeah, this sounds pretty terrible. And I don't expect we'll see the dude from Lost doing any headspins, so the cast doesn't instill me with much confidence.
