Eddie Murphy playing Richard Pryor in big screen biopic for DREAMGIRLS director Bill Condon!

Fascinating story to report this morning but one that is riddled with self-indulgency. During his famous 80's stand-up concert RAW, Eddie Murphy imitated his hero Richard Pryor in a dead-on routine which also gave us this quote...

I wanted to be Richard Pryor so bad. I use to go out on stage when I was 15, walk and talk and do everything like Richard Pryor.

It now looks like Eddie Murphy is going to get the opportunity to do that again, aged 47. Murphy has struck a deal and waived his huge massive salary to play his long time hero, the late comedian Richard Pryor in a film biopic to be directed by DREAMGIRLS writer/director Bill Condon. It's a $25 million Fox Searchlight project that will film this Summer for a late 2010 release, at the height of the Oscar season. It will be titled RICHARD PRYOR: IS IT SOMETHING I SAID. Here's my take on this. 80's Eddie Murphy was an Icon himself. He imitated Pryor but then developed an act that moved him into a different direction and he became a legend in his own right. He stopped imitating his hero and became EDDIE MURPHY! But somewhere in the 90's and especially the last seven years, something went lost along the way and he has become a joke, taking multiple fat suit roles, taking the paycheck time and time again, without embarrassment or shame for a man who was so outlandish and such a refreshing new voice in the industry when he first started out. In many ways, Murphy doesn't need Pryor. He could be bigger than Pryor and maybe he already is. If he carried on the direction he took a few years ago when he played serious for DREAMGIRLS, picking up his Oscar nomination which admitely he was baiting for and hell, maybe gave us a bit of nostalgia with a new BEVERLY HILLS COP movie, he could win back the many fans he lost for starring in NORBIT, MEET DAVE and the rest. We know there's a good actor beneath the fat suits and the cross dressing but we have seen it so God damn rarely. But he doesn't need to play Pryor to do it. It almost feels like Murphy is using stabilisers on a bike, he needs the support of an icon like Pryor to see him through this... but the reality is he doesn't. Sure, Murphy knows Pryor better than probably anyone in the film industry right now and I know there's obviously a lot of personal baggage he wants to get off his chest (aren't I right thinking there was some animosity between the two after the film they did together, HARLEM NIGHTS?) but it still feels like Oscar baiting. We've seen enough of these biopic projects attempting that. The biopic will feature significant roles for Reed Foxx (who of course was also in HARLEM NIGHTS) and Pryor's four wives, which leaves plenty of opportunity for those looking for Best Supporting Nods to give Condon a call. If Murphy brings it. Like really, really, really brings it. He could do justice to Pryor and walk away with the Oscar statue for Best Actor, especially with his DREAMGIRLS helmer behind the camera. But I don't know... it just feels so self-indulgent. What do you guys think? source - hitfix