Snoop Dogg Just Announced His Own Biopic at CinemaCon — Here Is Everything We Know About the Film

Snoop Dogg took the stage at CinemaCon 2026 to announce a Universal Pictures biopic about his life, directed by Craig Brewer with Jonathan Daviss set to play the rapper. Production begins this summer. Here is everything confirmed about the project.

CinemaCon 2026 — the annual exhibitor conference held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas where studios preview their upcoming theatrical slates — delivered one of its most memorable presentational moments on April 15 when Snoop Dogg walked onto the Universal Pictures stage, performed "Drop It Like It's Hot" live for a crowd of theater owners and industry executives, and then calmly announced that a feature film biopic about his life was officially in development at the studio.

The announcement was complete with key creative attachments: Craig Brewer, the director whose previous work on Hustle & Flow and the 2021 Coming 2 America reboot has established him as one of Hollywood's most reliable directors of music-adjacent narrative films, will direct. Jonathan Daviss, the Outer Banks actor who has been building toward a high-profile starring role for several years, is set to portray Snoop — born Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. in Long Beach, California, in 1971. Production is scheduled to begin this summer.

Specific plot details have not been disclosed. However, the general parameters of a Snoop Dogg biopic are fairly well defined by the arc of the subject's life: Long Beach origins, his early involvement with the West Coast rap scene, his signing with Death Row Records and the meteoric rise of Doggystyle in 1993, his close association with Dr. Dre and the specific role that record played in cementing West Coast rap's mainstream dominance, the subsequent legal difficulties (including a murder charge in 1993 of which he was acquitted), the remarkable career longevity that has produced genre-crossing collaborations from Bob Marley to Pharrell to Katy Perry, and his role as a cultural ambassador for hip-hop across four decades.

The biopic genre has been experiencing a specific evolution in 2026. Colman Domingo portraying Joe Jackson in the Michael Jackson biopic (April 24), the Snoop Dogg announcement, and multiple other music-adjacent biopics in production or announced reflect a specific studio appetite for familiar names whose stories can be told with the specific emotional range that the genre allows. Whether that appetite produces consistently quality work depends on whether the creative teams involved prioritise honest portraiture over hagiography.

Craig Brewer's track record suggests the former is more likely. Hustle & Flow, his most critically acclaimed music film, was notable specifically for its refusal to sentimentalise its protagonist in the ways that music biopics usually do. His approach to Snoop's story will be closely watched.

Jonathan Daviss has been one of Netflix's most visible young actors through his role in Outer Banks, but playing Snoop Dogg — one of the most physically distinctive and vocally unmistakable figures in music history — is a specific challenge of a different magnitude. The specific casting decision suggests Brewer and Universal are prioritising dramatic depth over impersonation, which is the approach that has produced the most respected recent music biopics (Rami Malek's Freddie Mercury, Chadwick Boseman's James Brown) rather than performances that prioritise surface imitation.