Muhammad Hassan provides an update on a project that he started with Shad Gaspard.
Gaspard's sudden and tragic passing rocked the wrestling world in 2020, allowing a ton of fans and wrestlers to pour their heart out in emotional tributes to the Cryme Tyme member.
Before his death, Gaspard and Muhammad Hassan collaborated on a screenplay that was turned into a graphic novel. In a new interview with Fightful, Hassan spoke about the history of the screenplay that he co-wrote with Gaspard.
"So I met Shad when he came to OVW and he was beast. I had been down there for a little bit, maybe a couple of years. He came in and we started hanging out. There's a group of us that spent all of our time together. We'd wrestle together. We'd go out to lunch. We'd hang out at night. I remember Shad used to bounce at a bar and we'd go see Shad at the bar. Fast forward, I had my brief career and then it's over with and then Shad just kind of starting to come into his own with Cryme Tyme. Shad was always very interested in movies. Him and I were huge movie fans. We spent a lot of time talking about movies and he knew that I was writing and I picked up a couple screenplays. So he had sent one of the screenplays that he had written to me and at the time it was more like a treatment. It was small, but it was based on a couple of movies that we both really loved. We started talking about it and we came up with kind of a concept that was based on the original and then him and I started working back and forth until we expanded into a full length screenplay. A lot had happened in between the time that we had written that until now. But really that became a screenplay, became a graphic novel. Then the graphic novel got picked up and sold and then the graphic novel was now being turned into a screenplay. After Shad passed, his wife and I—his widow and I now—had been collaborating with a group called Scout Comics. They were the ones that originally had released it as a graphic novel. Scout's goal and our goal was to eventually have this made into a movie. Really it's funny, again, the screenplay made into a graphic novel, made back into a screenplay with some much needed updating."
Hassan then provided a current day update on the project, noting that Slate Street Productions is attached to the screenplay.
"So we've had a lot of movement on it. We signed with State Street Productions. They've done some big movies, The Hate U Give, the new Bob Marley movie that came out last year. They brought on a writer and a director and they're currently working on the pitch and they're pitching it to some major studios. So we definitely could use a little bit of luck, but it's a solid screenplay. The idea is a great concept. It's very unique. I haven't seen anything like it in 20 years. Then the director, writer and the team that we have from Scout and State True that working on it really understand what Shad and I were kind of going for. They really understand our influence and they kind of absorbed the graphic novel and the screenplay, and then it came out through them in a very fresh and unique way. So I have a lot of hope. I try not to get too excited because the movie business, is like, ‘We'll get back to you next week,’ and then a year later you hear, but it's positive. It's all been positive. So him and I, that's been our heart and soul, and my goal is to get that produced and get it on screen just in Shad's memory."
Hassan closed out the topic by detailing some personal conversations he had with Gaspard, praising the type of person that he is.
"Yeah. 2008 / 2009 is when we started putting that down. The one thing that I'll say about Shad is that when Shad took the idea of this screenplay, which I had mentioned before, and I won't get into it, but it was directed by one of the major agencies because they wanted the star, the protagonist to be white and we wrote them as black because it was always supposed to be a vehicle for Shad. So the next idea was Shad was going to make this into a graphic novel. I had no money. This was the point in my life where everything was down. I was working at UPS overnight, putting myself through school, living in an apartment back in Syracuse, New York. I just said, ‘This is yours now. I can't. I don't have any money to give you.’ Shad said, ‘We're 50 50 no matter what.’ He said, ‘I got you,’ and he even made me sign a contract that said we're 50-50 no matter what. So that's the kind of guy that Shad was. So the least I can do now is put everything I can into it with Sil, his wife, to get it on screen for him."
Elsewhere in the interview, Muhammad Hassan recalled working with Tommaso Ciampa back in 2005. Check out his full comments on the matter by clicking here.
Fans can check out Fightful's full interview with Muhammad Hassan in the video linked at the top of this interview.
