Eddie Murphy Planning An Alien Abduction Comedy

By Will LeBlanc | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

I don’t remember the last time Eddie Murphy has done anything worth talking about. Beverly Hills Cop III maybe? Dreamgirls? Either way, it’s certainly not going to be Tower Heist, but for whatever reason this movie is getting the actor some attention, and he has some ideas he wants to talk about.

Namely, Murphy is starting to get buzz going for a sci-fi comedy he’s writing. In an interview with Rolling Stone (via Movie Hole), the Nutty Professor star says he’s working up a script called Jamal and Tyrell and Omar and Brick and Michael’s Wack-Ass Weekend, about a bunch of black friends who get abducted by aliens “on the way to the fights.” His goal with the film is to have it be the all-star, all-black comedy that he was promised when he joined Tower Heist, whose only other black star among the sea of white is Precious herself, Gabourey Sidibe.

The film sounds like The Hangover meets Paul, but with a really bad title and Eddie Murphy at the pen, which I don’t mean as a positive. His last writing effort was Norbit which drew from some of his more classic roles, but wasn’t worth downloading for free let alone the cost of a movie ticket. It’s one of the least funny movies of all time, and it’s the only writing experience he’s had in the last decade, which doesn’t bode well for that movie with the ridiculously long title mentioned above.

It’s baffling how a movie made by Brett Ratner of all people is getting Murphy back on the map, but it’s happening and he will maybe invade our sci-fi space again soon. Judging by Pluto Nash and Meet Dave though, we know exactly how this little experiment will end. Here’s hoping that after the Oscars, which Murphy is inexplicably being allowed to host, he fades back into the shadows.