OutKast tries its hand at the big screen

updated 3:04 p.m. ET Aug. 28, 2006

NEW YORK - OutKast has long been considered a groundbreaking force, their funkadelic sound, rapid-fire rhyming and decidedly Southern flair breathing excitement into a repetitious music world and making them one of the most popular acts in the world.

So Andre “3000” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton should have had little difficulty segueing into the world of film, especially considering the success of rappers in Hollywood.

Right?

That’s what Big Boi and Andre thought. But Hollywood’s initial response was lukewarm, and it would be almost a decade before they finally got an OutKast film — this week’s “Idlewild” — on movie screens.

“Being young and naive, we didn’t know what it took to make a movie,” admits Big Boi

Maybe it’s because they weren’t gangsta rappers looking to play a version of themselves in a gritty shoot-em-up. Or because the kind of film they were looking to make — a musical — went out of style decades ago.

Or maybe producers worried the eclectic vibe that made OutKast so popular in the music world — Andre’s wig-wearing, out-there persona and Big Boi’s cool, laid-back style — wouldn’t translate on film.

One humbling moment came after the pair, aided by video director Bryan Barber, wrote a full musical script based on their 1998 disc, “Aquemini.” A major studio apparently had interest in it — but with a catch.

“At the last minute, they was like, ’Yeah, we wanna buy it, but we don’t want y’all to be acting in it,”’ recalls Andre. “I think they pulled up Missy (Elliott) and Busta Rhymes’ names, because I guess they were the hottest thing going at that time.”

Fast forward almost a decade, and few acts are as hot as OutKast. Their last album, 2003’s double-disc “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,” sold more than 10 million copies in the United States, won them an album of the year Grammy and mountains of critical praise.

And, perhaps more importantly, it finally launched their joint movie career with “Idlewild,” a 1930s Prohibition-era musical.

“I don’t know who except OutKast could have pulled this off,” says Barber, who co-wrote and directed the film.

Search for focus
The ambitious, high-stepping musical/romance/drama not only features the scatting of old-time jazz but today’s rap. It started off simply as video treatments for two intended singles off the “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” album.

Though slightly fuzzy, Andre knew his vision was to play a mortician in love with a doomed girl, while Big Boi envisioned a place called church — where you went worship the lords of dance, women and wild times instead of a higher power.

Though both have recently acted in films individually (Andre in films like “Four Brothers” and “Be Cool,” Big Boi in “ATL”), they had never done a project together.

The idea grew from video treatments to a short independent film to an HBO-straight-to-TV picture. But Andre and Big Boi still dreamed of more.

“When the movie started out, at first it was a million dollar picture,” Big Boi says. “And after we started shooting, they started believing in us more.”

“We knew if the movie was good enough, they’d release it to theater, so our whole goal was to make the movie good enough,” says Andre with a smile. “We were going to try and push it further.”

It eventually ballooned into an estimated $35 million flick co-starring veteran actors like Ben Vereen, Ciecly Tyson, Ving Rhames and Oscar-nominee Terrence Howard, along with musicians Macy Gray and Patti LaBelle.

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