Don't believe the hype. True, famed music-video director Hype Williams came back from his video-making hiatus with new clips for New Edition and Ja Rule and an upcoming video for Ashanti. But he insists he wants to focus on video games and step back into the feature-film realm.

Williams has been signed by producer Joel Silver to direct a remake of 1972's "Superfly," the classic Gordon Parks blaxploitation film.

"It's kinda like a modern-day retelling of the story," Williams said recently in Los Angeles. "We're going to be doing that at the end of the year, hopefully."

When prodded about which actor would fill the shoes of Ron O'Neal as Youngblood Priest, a cocaine entrepreneur trying to put hustling behind him, Hype would only laugh and answer, "A big shot! That's for sure."

The director isn't sure exactly when and where filming will take place, but he's hoping to follow the original and use his hometown as the backdrop.

"I would hope to shoot in New York," he revealed. "It's a real part of the story. It's just hard sometimes to make movies like that happen. It's really weird now [to shoot in New York]. You have to weigh out what means more: having money to spend on the look of the movie versus being able to stay true to the storytelling and shoot it where it was meant to be shot."

Williams is especially excited to be working with Joel Silver. He calls the man who gave musicians like Aaliyah and DMX their chance to act a visionary.

"He was one of the main producers who really got my potential to make a movie and do a good job of telling a story," Williams said. "He actually is one of the few people with the vision that our industry needs."

Way before Silver saw Williams' potential, there was another industry bigwig who thought a young Hype was so much the bomb that he wanted to work with him.

"I was a gopher for Michael Bivins when he was in Bell Biv Devoe," Williams said, explaining why he was pleased to get the call to direct "Hot 2 Nite" for Bivins' other group, New Edition. "Those guys helped give me a start when I was younger. They really gave me a lot of insight and helped me get a firm position of what I wanted to do as an artist. When the time came for me to show them a little bit of what I knew how to do, I was honored."

"I did Ja [Rule's video] for [producer Irv Gotti], I'm doing Ashanti for Irv — it's just really for friends," Williams said about who can get him back into the director's chair to helm music videos. "I'm not as big into the way the music industry works as much as I used to be. But at times you might see me pop in and out."

Hype is headed to Vancouver in a couple of weeks to direct Ashanti's "Only U" video. He's also been working on a 60-second animated music video for an EA video game called "The Urbz: Sims in the City."

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