Eminem Gets Day vs. Denzel?

August 28, 2000 -- Rapper Eminem is being courted to make his silver-screen debut in the forthcoming Denzel Washington thriller Training Day, reports Variety.

Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures are wooing the trouble-prone rapper to play the villain in the flick, about a veteran Los Angeles Police Department cop (Washington) breaking in a rookie narcotics officer.

Among the actors being considered for the role of Washington's cop-in-training sidekick are Spider-Man-elect Tobey Maguire, Ryan Phillippe, and Ethan Hawke. Shooting on the picture, to be directed by Antoine Fuqua (The Replacement Killers), is slated to begin next spring.

This would be Eminem's first major feature-film appearance (although he previously appeared in the independent project Da Hip-Hop Witch, a spoof of The Blair Witch Project). Producers are undoubtedly banking that the rapper's success on TV will translate into big box-office pull, just as Sisqo used the momentum surrounding "Thong Song" and MTV's Sisqo's Shakedown to land a role in the upcoming movie Getting Over Alison and a sitcom development deal.