As Deadline reports, Eddie Murphy is in early talks to play Parliament-Funkadelic leader George Clinton. Murphy will also serve as producer with John Davis and Catherine Davis through their Davis Entertainment banner.
At the moment Murphy and Davies are tying down the rights with Clinton, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner. Then they will set writers and shop the project. Deadline adds that Murphy has a three-picture deal with Amazon that came after the success of Coming 2 America. This is a passion project for Murphy.
Deadline rightly concludes that Clinton is widely considered to be the Godfather of Funk music, who rivals 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 band George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic, and ultimately to becoming a musical 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.
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.
