HOLLYWOOD — He may not have taken home a popcorn trophy at Sunday's MTV Movie Awards— where he lost the Breakthrough Performance honor to Zac Efron — but if the gold carpet was any indication, Chris Brown, the hottest singer and dancer in the music business just happens to be also the hottest young actor in Hollywood.
Both T.I. and "America's Best Dance Crew" judge Shane Sparks revealed exclusively to MTV News — in completely separate interviews — that they're in talks with Brown to star in their next feature films.
"I have a script that I'm working on called 'Bone Deep,' over at Screen Gems, that I'll be starring in with Idris Elba," T.I. said, name-checking the British actor who co-starred with him in "American Gangster" and with Brown in "This Christmas."
At press time, Brown's reps said he was working on two movies, "Heist" (which is presumably the T.I. project) and "Traded," and is in talks for "Phenom" a film about a high school basketball player.
"It's a new-age, young, hip-hop 'Heat,' " Tip said, comparing his film to the 1995 classic that brought Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino together.
T.I. will star in and produce the project, and the MC hopes to cast Brown as a young member of a fun-loving criminal crew. "These are young, cool, well-dressed, articulate bank-robbers," Tip explained. "We're actually contemplating Chris Brown. I don't know how concrete that is, but we're contemplating it. ... He'll be the little homey.
"You can definitely expect action, definitely. It will be very entertaining," the "ATL" star promised of his producing debut. "In music, I'm on both sides: the executive business end as well as the artist/performer end. And film is no different."
An excited Sparks told us his next big-screen project "is a movie called 'The Jump-Off,' and it's like a 'High School Musical' meets 'You Got Served.' " (This is probably the movie Brown's reps call "Traded.")
Unlike T.I.'s project, Brown would be tapping feet rather than squeezing triggers in this flick. "Chris Brown is up for the lead guy on it," Sparks added. "Hopefully, that works out. The movie is a smash, and this'll be the icing on the cake. So, be on the lookout for it — it should be out at the beginning of next year. We start filming next month; we're rehearsing right now."
With a grin, the man who choreographed "Served" said that he'll be plotting out this movie's dance moves too. "We've got singing, we've got dancing, we've got ballet, we've got lyrical, we've got salsa. It's going to be the first movie to introduce every style, and have a musical sense to it, where you can hear people actually singing and doing spoken word and rap.
"The journey of this crew ... has them learning stuff as their teacher takes them through the process of ... broadening their horizons," he explained. "So at the end of the movie, when they dance in the contest, they will have [more experience than] just being a hip-hop crew, which is what they started out to be.
"He called us," Sparks said of Brown, barely an hour before the 19-year-old showed off his dance moves in a jaw-dropping display alongside funnyman Mike Myers on the Movie Awards stage. "Now, we just need to make sure everything is right for him. We've got to take care of him. He was very interested in the movie, and if he comes aboard, it's going to be the hottest movie ever made. Trust me."
The "So You Think You Can Dance" judge also revealed that once Brown signs on the dotted line, he has every intention of getting the star to contribute his voice as well.
"We're definitely going to try to get him to do some music," Sparks promised. "We're already working on the soundtrack, as a matter of fact. And if Chris becomes a part of it, we'll definitely try to get him to do the title track."
" 'Stomp the Yard' was by one of my best friends, and one of the best movies of last year," Sparks said of Brown's acting debut. "I really liked it as a dance movie."
Ultimately, however, he said that one thing will give "The Jump-Off"/"Traded" a leg up on Brown's last dancing flick. "I'm going to be doing the choreography," he laughed.
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