eddie murphy
Big Screen
No Amount Of John Travolta-Brand Gatorade Can Cure This Hangover
12:43AM Richard Lawson | The movie about drunks and their drunken ways keeps hitting the big time. As does the movie about white people in the jungle. Meanwhile, Eddie Murphy and John Travolta have both seen better days. Click through for more on the US box office. More »
Egregious Lack Of Banana-Stuffed Tailpipes Hurts Leaked ‘Beverly Hills Cop 4′ Draft
9:56AM STV | We’re not sure which of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief we’ve hit in our consideration of Beverly Hills Cop 4. Denial and anger seem ages ago, as does bargaining. And a script review appearing online today has us skipping depression altogether for what we suppose is something akin to acceptance — if you call “believing there is actually a studio cynical enough to greenlight this with Brett Ratner behind the camera” acceptance, or if that just throws us back to the beginning again. Help us sort it out, will you? More »
Billy Bob Thornton ‘Elm Street’ Rumours Spark Defamer Casting Frenzy
6:50AM STV | The day’s fastest-spreading casting rumour intrigues as much for its potential for on-screen carnage as its requisite off-screen tragedy: The man who originated Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street has Billy Bob Thornton pegged to portray the razor-fingered villain in a planned remake. Robert Englund doesn’t sound too upset about it, either, informing JoBlo that the Michael Bay-produced reimagining would treat Wes Craven’s original with the hacky, high-gloss dignity it deserved 25 years ago. Englund stopped short of suggesting he’d join the film, of course, lest he subject himself to Thornton’s infamous scythe-handling clumsiness. More »
The Death of ‘Austin Powers’ (And Six More Hobbled Franchises Worth Putting Down)
3:00AM STV | After the unfortunate reception for The Love Guru, it’s just too easy to write off New Line’s prospective Austin Powers revival (which Mike Myers is reportedly working on for New Line with former series collaborator Mike McCullers) as yet another ill-advised folly belching the black smoke of Myers’s career. In fact, taken as merely a part of the larger phenomenon we at Defamer like to call The End of Ideas, the Powers franchise is but a speck of the shit on Hollywood’s collective bathroom wall — a tableau diligently studied today by the haz-mat crew at Entertainment Weekly.
Fox and Hallmark’s Greeting Card Empire: A Defamer Sneak Peek
9:25AM STV | Variety reports today that 20th Century Fox and Hallmark have reached a landmark licensing agreement granting the greeting card giant exclusive use of the studio’s library. While Hallmark has already issued cards for properties like Napoleon Dynamite and has its eye on major titles including Futurama and The Sound of Music, Defamer wrangled a hold of mockups for Hallmark’s “Turbulence at Fox ‘08″ line — a selection celebrating the beauty and joy of life through Fox’s bumpy year at the box-office. Follow the jump for a glimpse at warm greetings to come by way of Manoj Night Shyamalan, Eddie Murphy, The X-Files and others, and feel free to suggest your own heartfelt pairings as well. More »
Will Smith Up, Ladies Down on Forbes’s Annual List of Stupid-Rich Stars
7:50AM Defamer Hollywood | It’s that time of year again, when Hollywood’s biggest stars harvest their multiplex crops, drop the hammer on their mums and size up their places among Forbes’s annual list of highest-paid movie stars. As we’ve come to expect, it’s Will Smith’s world, with the megastar and noted Scientology-school patron raking in $80 million since last June; the remainder of the list comprises mainstays like Johnny Depp ($72 million) and Leonardo DiCaprio ($45 million) along with slip-sliding shockers including Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers, each tied at $55 million thanks in large part to the Shrek franchise’s enduring success.
Fox Boss Forgets Own ‘Sci-fi Isn’t Funny’ Rule in Greenlighting ‘Meet Dave’
7:30AM Defamer Hollywood | Patrick Goldstein is getting kind of good at this blogging thing! After a busy week tipping the world off to the wit and wisdom of censor nonpareil Joan Graves and catching Alan Horn sharpening his ax for Where the Wild Things Are, he spent Monday afternoon taking on the Eddie Murphy Problem. “Murphy has pulled off an almost unprecedented achievement with Meet Dave,” Goldstein notes. “He’s delivered a movie that even 20th Century Fox couldn’t market.”
Why You Don’t Care About Eddie Murphy
10:15AM Defamer Hollywood | We needed a little time today to digest our feelings after the miserable box-office showing of Meet Dave, whose free-fall over the weekend resulted in the ugliest opening of Eddie Murphy’s career. Not having seen it, we have to assume that $5.1 million gross aside, the film is at least superior to Norbit (not to mention Vampire in Brooklyn, Pluto Nash and a sprinkling of other Murphy misfires over the years). We’d even venture to say it’ll be better than Beverly Hills Cop IV, the PG-rated abomination to which Murphy and Brett Ratner are attached for Paramount. Certainly it’s better than The Love Guru, whose own beleaguered comic icon Mike Myers had flowers and a thank-you note on Murphy’s porch by sometime Sunday afternoon. More »
‘Hellboy II’: The Golden Weekend
2:45AM Seth | Four ways to jump start your Monday morning: 1. Moisten fork prongs with mouth. Place end of fork between teeth, press prongs into nearest wall socket. 2. Fill microwave-safe cup with water. Microwave for 2-3 minutes (times vary). Remove cup, pour contents directly onto eyeballs. 3. Have a co-worker hold a duct tape gun to your left ear. Spin in counter-clockwise circles until your entire head is mummified inside a sticky cellophane prison. See how long you can last without breathing before slicing open at mouth. 4. Read the box office numbers! More »
