Comedy legend Eddie Murphy will produce and star in an upcoming biopic about funk pioneer and Parliament-Funkadelic founder George Clinton, according to Deadline.com.
Starting with his humble beginnings in North Carolina in the 1940’s, the movie will detail the life and career of the eccentric record producer and singer, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. It will trace how, with the formation of the groups Parliament and Funkadelic, he became one of funk’s founding fathers, and ultimately had a major impact on the next generations of artists, including in hip-hop and other genres.
Eddie Murphy will produce the film alongside Davis Entertainment‘s John Davis, Catherine Davis, and John Fox as part of a three-picture deal the actor made with Amazon after the recent success of Coming 2 America (the sequel to his original 1988 hit movie). The movie’s production team is currently in talks with George Clinton to secure rights, after which they will set writers and shop the project. Murphy has called the film a passion project.
As of June 2019, a movie about famed Casablanca Records head Neil Bogart featuring Samuel L. Jackson as George Clinton was also in the works. At that time, the project’s star-studded cast was set to include comedian D.L. Hughely as Bootsy Collins, Kenan Thompson (of SNL fame) as Motown Records founder Berry Gordy, Jason Derulo as Ron Isley, Steven Strait and X Ambassadors’ Sam Harris as KISS’ Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, respectively, and Neil Patrick Harris as KISS co-manager Bill Aucoin. The current status of that project is unclear, and no release date has been set.
George Clinton has upcoming tour dates in the United Kingdom on May 22nd-28th. He also has upcoming U.S. dates at College Street Music Hall in New Haven, CT on June 18th and The Caverns in Pelham, TN on July 2nd. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.
Eddie Murphy is set to begin production on a Netflix comedy entitled You People, in which he will star alongside Jonah Hill, who will play Jerry Garcia in an upcoming Grateful Dead biopic. He will also star in Beverly Hills Cop 4 and was recently nominated for an Emmy for his appearance on Saturday Night Live, where he got his start in the early ’80s.