Kid Cudi to Write, Direct and Star in Basquiat Biopic ‘JEAN’

Jean-Michel Basquiat is getting another turn on screen, and this time the man playing him is also holding the pen and the camera. Rapper Kid Cudi announced on Instagram last week that he will write, direct and star in JEAN, a forthcoming biopic of the late artist who became one of the defining figures of 1980s New York.

Cudi described the project as a “love letter to Jean, the 80s and NY city,” according to Hyperallergic, which reported the announcement. He said production is set to begin next year. No release date, studio, distributor or supporting cast was mentioned in the report.

The announcement, dated October 21, came with a mockup promotional poster and several black-and-white photographs of Cudi in character as Basquiat, posed in a large studio. In the caption, Cudi said the artist has been an inspiration throughout his career and called telling the story “in a way we haven’t seen before” the “biggest honor.”

“This one im so proud of and excited about,” he wrote. He also acknowledged the particular difficulty of the assignment: “To write a film about someone who existed was a challenge, but it was a welcomed one. A lot of research, books, talks with people that knew him.”

For a city that still claims Basquiat as its own, the timing lands in an autumn when downtown’s art-world past remains very much in conversation. The painter, who rose from SAMO graffiti on Lower Manhattan walls to the top of the international art scene before his death in 1988, has long been a fixture of New York’s cultural self-image, and the neighborhood and decade Cudi is pointing to are inseparable from his legend.

The film also arrives as Cudi builds a second public identity as a visual artist. According to Hyperallergic, he debuted his painting practice under the name Scotty Ramon in a group presentation at Art Cologne 2025. This January he held his first solo exhibition, Echoes of the Past, at the Paris location of the gallery Ruttkowski;68. Seen against that backdrop, a Basquiat project reads as a natural extension of the artistic path he has been charting in public.

Much remains unknown. The source material does not say where the film will shoot, who else will appear in it, or which chapters of Basquiat’s life it will cover. What Cudi has offered so far is a statement of intent, a set of stills and a promise of original research drawn from books and conversations with people who knew the artist.

For now, JEAN is an announcement rather than a finished picture. But for anyone who has stood in front of a Basquiat canvas at a Manhattan museum or followed the long afterlife of his work in the city’s galleries and auction rooms, a film that treats 1980s New York as a central character will be worth watching as production approaches next year.