Robert De Niro to join 50 Cent in Freelancers

In altogether unsettling news, Deadline have announced that Robert De Niro will co-star with Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson in police drama Freelancers .

Forest Whitaker is also in talks to join the movie, which is produced by 50 Cent's production company Cheetah Vision, co-founded by Fiddy and Randall Emmett.

So far Cheetah Vision has mostly churned out straight-to-video stinkers like Before I Self Destruct , Caught in the Crossfire and Gun .

Freelancers centres on the son of a murdered cop (50 Cent) who decides to enrol in the police. His father's former partner, Vic Sarcone (the De Niro character), looks out for him and makes him part of his "rogue task force".

Jess Terrero ( Soul Plane ) will direct. De Niro and Cent previously appeared together in Righteous Kill .

Quite what attracted Oscar-winning giants Bobby D and Whitaker to this project remains a mystery, though both have a demonstrated an affinity to below-par movies recently.

All the signs point towards a dud, so, forbidding a miraculous surprise, this looks set to be an utter waste of their talents.

Shooting begins next month in New Orleans. With De Niro's name on the poster this might at least get a cinema release.

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.