Kid Cudi will write, direct and star as Jean-Michel Basquiat in a new film called Jean

Kid Cudi is making a film about Jean-Michel Basquiat, and he is doing nearly all of it himself. The Cleveland rapper and actor announced on Instagram on 21 October 2026 that Jean is his next project: he wrote the script over the summer, he will direct, and he will play the painter.

Principal photography is set to begin in 2027. No studio, producers or release date have been announced, and the rest of the cast has not been named.

What Cudi has said

Cudi described the film in his own post as "a love letter to Jean, the 80s and NY city". He has said he did extensive research, reading books and speaking with people who knew Basquiat, and that writing about a real person was a challenge he wanted. He also shared photos from an early wardrobe test, showing him in a dark, dreadlocked wig, and made clear the look is a rough first pass rather than the final one.

Why it fits

Basquiat is the Brooklyn-born artist who went from spray-painting the SAMO tag on Lower Manhattan walls in the late 1970s to the centre of the New York art world before his death in 1988, aged 27. His work has long been tied to hip-hop: he made the 1983 single "Beat Bop" with Rammellzee and K-Rob, and rappers have name-checked him for decades.

For Cudi it is the latest step in a move behind the camera. He announced his directing debut, the Netflix comedy Teddy, back in 2022. Fans have also spent years asking him to play Basquiat, and this is the answer.

It is not the only Basquiat project in the works, as a separate film, Samo Lives, has Kelvin L. Harrison Jr. in the lead. We will update this story when Cudi's film has a studio, a cast and a start date.

Kid Cudi's artist page, with everything we have written on him, is at /artist/kid-cudi.