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Eddie Murphy Said To Play Funk Legend George Clinton In Upcoming Biopic

Source: Michael Kovac / Getty

According to Variety, Eddie Murphy will play funk legend George Clinton in an upcoming biopic. The comedic great played the late Rudy Ray Moore in the 2019 Netflix movie Dolemite Is My Name, and this new flick is reported to be “a passion project” for the 60-year-old actor.

Early accounts are that the George Clinton biopic will start from his childhood in Kannapolis, NC, to his creation of the historic Parliament-Funkadelic collective in the late 1960s. Murphy will supposedly produce the movie with the father-daughter duo of John and Catherine Davis for Davis Entertainment, and the team is said to be in the process of securing the rights to Clinton’s story before they round out the writing crew and proceed with any studio deals.

Murphy has a successful history with Davis Entertainment. The two parties have worked together on a number of movies, including 1998’s Dr. Doolittle and its sequel, Norbit, and Dolemite Is My Name. It isn’t clear if the Clinton biopic will constitute part of Murphy’s “three-movie, first-look” contract, which he signed a little more than six months ago with Amazon Studios.

In 2019, Samuel L. Jackson was allegedly supposed to portray the P-Funk band leader in another biopic called Spinning Gold, but Deadline revealed that Jackson has since been replaced with Wiz Khalifa last year.

And five years ago, Killer Mike sat with Clinton for NPR’s ShopTalk. The two met at Mike’s Atlanta barbershop, The SWAG (Shave Wash And Groom) Shop, to discuss various topics, including the similarities between learning about music from the older generation and learning about life from the barbers.

“Music and barbering have that similarity in that a lot of knowledge gets passed on,” Killer Mike noted. “Like in 1992, ’93, ’91, you and Curtis Mayfield were here essentially running a mentorship school. You mentored Organized Noize, Dallas Austin, and people like Jermaine Dupri. This Atlanta music scene wouldn’t be here — but with barbering also, it seems to me a lot of the older barbers take the time to teach younger dudes… What did you pull out of barbershops from a philosophical standpoint that’s helped you in life?”

“The older guys in there always had information that you needed as a kid,” the P-Funk legend replied. “You didn’t necessarily want to hear it, but the way they presented it to you… You know how you can look at the mirror here and see the barber’s head? They would talk over your head like that.”

“Some don’t make sense. Some don’t give a damn,” Clinton added. “There’s always gonna be somebody who in there, no matter how philosophical [things get, who’s gonna feel like] ‘I don’t give a f*ck,’ [or] “What it matter to me?’ You gonna get every point of view in any situation. So if you got your ears open, you’ll learn a lot in the barbershop — even though there’s a lot of B.S. going on.”

Photo: Michael Kovac / Getty