Deadline has reported that Eddie Murphy is in early talks to play George Clinton, a musician/bandleader widely known as the Godfather of Funk, for a passion project movie.
The George Clinton movie will “tell the story of the iconic musician’s humble beginnings in North Carolina in the 1940s, to the formation of his groundbreaking band George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic, and ultimately to becoming a musical influence on artists of the hip-hop generation including Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Outkast and Wu-Tang Clan, among many others.” In addition to starring as George Clinton, Eddie Murphy would also produce the project alongside John Davis and Catherine Davis of Davis Entertainment. They’re currently trying to nail down rights with Clinton, after which they will announce writers and shop the project around town.
Eddie Murphy stepped away from the limelight for several years after a run of subpar movies. “I was making shitty movies,” Murphy explained last year. “I was like, ‘This shit ain’t fun. They’re giving me Razzies…Motherfuckers gave me the ‘worst actor ever’ Razzie. [So I thought], ‘Maybe it’s time to take a break.’” Thankfully, Murphy’s return has earned him plenty of accolades, first by playing Blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore in Netflix’s Dolemite Is My Name and reprising his role of Prince Akeem Joffer in Amazon’s Coming 2 America. Speaking of Amazon, Eddie Murphy has closed a three-picture, first-look deal with the studio, so it’s possible his George Clinton movie could land at the streaming service. The actor’s next film will find him starring alongside Jonah Hill in You People for Netflix and he also has Beverly Hills Cop 4 in the works as well. Bad Boys for Life directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah are set to helm the movie, but Murphy has said that he won’t move forward with it until the script is right.