Eddie Murphy is in early talks to play Parliament-Funkadelic leader George Clinton in an upcoming biopic.
Murphy also will serve as producer with Davis Entertainment’s John Davis, Catherine Davis, and John Fox. They are tying down rights with the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner, and then they will set writers and shop the project.
Murphy has a three-picture deal with Amazon that came after the success of Coming 2 America, and this is a passion project for him.
Clinton is widely considered to be the Godfather of Funk, rivaling James Brown and Sly Stone as the foremost innovators in that musical genre. The film will tell the story of the iconic musician’s humble beginnings in North Carolina in the 1940s to the formation of his groundbreaking bands Parliament and Funkadelic and ultimately to becoming a major 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.
Murphy teamed with Davis on the Netflix film Dolemite Is My Name, which got him a lot of accolades playing the unlikely Blaxploitation film star Rudy Ray Moore. He then followed with Coming 2 America, the sequel to his 1988 comedy classic. Murphy next begins production on the Kenya Barris-directed Netflix comedy You People, in which he co-stars with Jonah Hill. That will be followed with Beverly Hills Cop 4 this summer, as he reprises his Axel Foley role. Murphy separately was Emmy-nominated for his long-awaited return to Saturday Night Live, the show that launched him in the early 1980s.
Clinton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, alongside 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. In 2019, he and those members were given their Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards.
Murphy is repped by WME and Skip Brittenham.
Source: Deadline
