50 Cent Joins Dead Man Running

Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson has joined the cast of writer/director Alex de Rakoff’s indie gangster flick Dead Man Running. The rapper will play a ruthless loan shark in the movie, which details a criminal world as hard hit by the recession as Wall Street.

Jackson , whose film credits include Get Rich or Die Tryin’ and Righteous Kill, will share the screen with Tamer Hassan (Layer Cake), Danny Dyer (The Business), Brenda Blethyn (Secrets and Lies) and Monet Mazur (Stoned).

Set in London, Running centers on an ex-con trying to go straight who is given 24 hours to raise 100,000 pounds ($150,000) to pay off Jackson’s loan shark or become a “dead man running.” The mission takes him from the dog tracks of East London to the underground drug scene of rural Manchester as they try every trick and scam in the book to get the cash before it’s too late.

Rakoff previously wrote and directed The Calcium Kid, which opened in 2004 and starred Orlando Bloom as an amateur boxer who, by a bizarre twist of events, ends up fighting the world champion in his home town.

Production on Dead Man Running began yesterday in London.