Why Johnny Depp’s City Of Lies Took So Long To Come Out

Johnny Depp’s latest film, the reality-based crime drama City of Lies, has finally been released after years sitting finished on the shelf. Based on the non-fiction book LAbyrinth by author Randall Sullivan, City of Lies examines the still officially unsolved 1997 murders of rap greats Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G., and more specifically the police investigation into their deaths. Depp stars as Russell Poole, an LAPD detective who investigated the murder of Notorious B.I.G. According to Poole, he found credible evidence linking an LAPD officer to the murder, but the then chief of police shut him down.

As with most films that are said to be based on a true story, City of Lies dramatizes the real events, including inventing characters like journalist Jack Jackson (Forest Whitaker), who’s actually a fictionalized version of Sullivan himself. Still, while City of Lies clearly has an intended viewpoint it’s trying to push on the case, that doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t be an entertaining movie.

Despite filming being completed in May 2017, City of Lies only recently got any type of general theatrical release, on March 19, 2021, which expanded to VOD on April 9. With leads the caliber of Depp and Whitaker, and juicy real-life source material to work from, it seems really strange that City of Lies has been shelved this long. Here’s why that ended up happening.

Why Johnny Depp’s City of Lies Took Four Years To Be Released

As with many Hollywood delays, neither current distributor Saban Films or any of the prior companies involved with City of Lies have revealed official reasoning for its multiple delays, but a few very likely culprits are available. City of Lies was originally planned for a September 7, 2018 release date, only to be yanked from the release schedule about a month before that. This happened around the same time that Johnny Depp personally, City of Lies director Brad Furman, and multiple producers were sued by location manager Gregg “Rocky” Brooks, who claimed that an angry Depp had physically attacked him on set, and that he was subsequently fired after refusing to agree not to file suit over the alleged incident.

It’s worth noting that several other crew members present at the time later said that while Brooks and Depp indeed had a verbal confrontation, there was no physicality involved, and shooting resumed afterward. There’s also the possible factor of Depp’s messy divorce with Amber Heard, in which he was accused of domestic abuse. The fallout of this divorce was still very much in the public eye at the time City of Lies was first delayed, and also ultimately played a role in him bowing out as Grindelwald from the Fantastic Beasts franchise.

Beyond Depp’s legal issues, another interesting possibility was also floated around the time that City of Lies got knocked off the schedule. A Daily Beast report, which included interview portions with both Furman and Randall Sullivan, asserted that the LAPD had actively attempted to suppress the film from being released, as it painted them and their Notorious B.I.G. investigation in a negative light, and also contained new information that might justify reopening B.I.G’s mom Violetta Wallace’s wrongful death lawsuit against the LAPD that had been previously been dismissed without prejudice. With this in mind, it’ll be interesting to see if City of Lies finally being released ends up changing anything on that front.

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