Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd had everything they needed to become a chart-topping rap act – everything except an American accent. Now they’re the subjects of a movie about their audacious scheme to succeed with fake California personas, directed by James McAvoy (X-Men franchise) and coming soon to the United States.

The two young men, who met in college in Dundee, Scotland and started rapping together. They found success on the internet and locally, but when they went to an audition in London for a label “looking for the next Eminem,” according to Bain, the music label reps couldn’t contain their laughter at their thick Scottish accents, calling them “the rapping Proclaimers,” after the Scottish band famous for the single “I Gonna Be (500 Miles).”

“They said, this is a cool comedy act, but not quite what we’re looking for,” Bain said on the podcast Criminal. “Scotland is groundskeeper Willie. It’s Braveheart. It’s Sean Connery. It’s drunk ginger people in skirts. Scotland is not rap. We can’t sell that.”

After that, the duo cooked up a plan to become American – from California, specifically – and practiced their accents. They named themselves Silibil N’ Brains, invented and practiced their backstories, and got signed to a label, received a generous advance, and opened up for Eminem. Their scheme worked…until it didn’t.

James McAvoy makes his directorial debut with a movie about Bain and Boyd’s rise and fall called California Schemin’, written by Archie Thomson and Elaine Gracie, who adapted the screenplay from Bain’s autobiography of the same name, and starring Samuel Bottomley as Billy and Séamus McLean Ross as Gavin. McAvoy also appears in the film.

California Schemin’ made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, and just recently closed the Glasgow Film Festival.

Now US audiences will have a chance to see the film, as Bob Yari and Magenta Light Studios has acquired US theatrical rights to California Schemin’. The film should appear in US theaters later this year.