Jesse Pinkman is going to the record business. Aaron Paul, the Emmy-winning Breaking Bad actor, has been cast as Interscope co-founder Jimmy Iovine in Snoop, Universal Pictures’ film about the life of Snoop Dogg. Giovanni Ribisi joins the same cast as David Kenner, an attorney who worked with Death Row Records.
Both castings surfaced on November 9 in industry casting reports and now sit on the film’s public cast list. Universal and the producers have not put out a statement of their own that we could read, so treat the character details as reported rather than officially announced. The film’s release date is not in doubt: Universal has it down for August 6, 2027, in the United States.
Why Jimmy Iovine matters to the Snoop story
If you only know Iovine from the Beats headphones or a stint as an American Idol mentor, his place in a Snoop Dogg movie can look odd. It is not. Iovine and film producer Ted Field launched Interscope Records in 1989. By 1992 the young label was the money and distribution behind Death Row Records, the West Coast powerhouse that put out Dr. Dre’s The Chronic that December, with Snoop rapping on its biggest singles.
A year later came Snoop’s own debut, Doggystyle, released in November 1993 through the same Death Row and Interscope pipeline. It entered the US albums chart at number one with the biggest first-week sales of any 1990s hip-hop album. In other words, the label boss Paul is playing signed the checks behind the record that made Snoop a star.
The bond outlasted that era. Iovine and Dre went on to co-found Beats Electronics in 2006 and sold it to Apple in 2014 for about $3 billion. Iovine even voiced himself, next to Dre, in two Grand Theft Auto Online updates.
A quick guide to the business side of the cast
Most of the Snoop ensemble plays musicians. These two newcomers play the people around the music:
- Aaron Paul as Jimmy Iovine: the Interscope co-founder whose label handled Death Row’s distribution.
- Giovanni Ribisi as David Kenner: an attorney who represented Death Row Records in the 1990s, according to the casting reports.
- Cynthia Erivo as Afeni Shakur: Tupac’s mother, cast earlier this month.
- Jonathan Daviss as Snoop Dogg, with Myles Bullock as Dr. Dre and Camron Jones as Tupac Shakur.
Badiyaa reported on Erivo’s casting on November 5, in our story on her role as Afeni Shakur. This week’s additions shift the lens from the studio booth to the boardroom.
Who is making Snoop
Craig Brewer, who made Hustle and Flow, directs from a script he co-wrote with Joe Robert Cole. Snoop Dogg produces alongside Brian Grazer and Sara Ramaker, through Death Row Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. Filming began in Los Angeles in mid-September 2026. Ice-T, SwayvoTwain as the Notorious B.I.G. and Hercy Miller as Master P are also on the cast list.
For Paul, it is another real-life figure after years of fiction, and a big swing: Iovine is famous for talking fast and closing deals. For Ribisi, best known lately for the Avatar films, it is a supporting turn in a crowded ensemble. Snoop arrives in US theaters on August 6, 2027.
Further reading
Image: Siebbi, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
