50 Cent can't call his cancer movie Things Fall Apart after all

By Sean O'Neal | September 14, 2011 | 8:02pm

Aux Features Film

When we originally marveled at 50 Cent’s forthcoming football drama Things Fall Apart, and the way it finally made cancer seem really serious by giving it to 50 Cent, we joked that it was actually an adaptation of Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel of the same name, because that is just the sort of erudite silliness we get up to here in our tweed-lined offices atop the ivory tower. Unfortunately, not everyone realized we were only joshing—a sentiment recently echoed by Achebe himself, who took legal action against 50 Cent out of concern that even more people might be misled into believing that the works were related. This confusion could then be borne out in scores of lazy high school book reports on Achebe’s themes of how culture defines the individual, as seen in how that one guy couldn’t play in the NFL because he got cancer.

In response, 50 Cent, whom the Guardian says was apparently "not aware" of the book, did what 50 Cent would definitely do and offered Achebe $1 million from one of his Vitamin Water piles to keep the title—a figure that Achebe took “as an insult,” which is pretty bold, considering he stole that title from Yeats in the first place. But rather than argue this—or point out that Achebe didn’t seem to have any problem when The Roots borrowed it—50 Cent simply stopped trying to throw money at things, and agreed to rename his film All Things Fall Apart. Which could end up being a blessing, as it now more properly conveys the totality of the devastation that audiences will feel when they realize that 50 Cent’s football player gets cancer, and thus will probably lose his scholarship and dreadlocks. [via Vulture]