Eddie Murphy’s career spans 50 years
Award-winning actor and comedian Eddie Murphy has featured in many box office hit movies. Despite his accomplishments, the 56-year-old recently admitted that there were some movies he wished he had never rejected when the offers came.
Murphy touched on the topic during an interview with The Associated Press, and when he was asked about the movies he regrets declining.
“Yeah, there are a couple of movies. ‘Ghostbusters,’ I was supposed to do ‘Ghostbusters.’ Didn’t do that. And ‘Rush Hour.’ Didn’t do that. Oh, and ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit.’ Those are my big three ‘wish I would have done’ movies,” Murphy revealed.
Asked what it was about those movies that made him wish he were a part of, The Nutty Professor star said, “They were huge, giant hits.” He added while laughing: “They were giant hit movies.”
“Well, with ‘Ghostbusters,’ I did ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ instead. So, it was like, it was do this or that, so it worked out cool,” Murphy also explained. “And ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ just sounded ridiculous to me, and I passed on it. And, afterwards, I was like, ‘Oh that’s f—ing amazing.’”
Ghostbusters domestically raked in over $243 million at the box office when it was released in 1984, Fox News reported. A total of three Rush Hour movies were released, with the first and second projects respectively grossing over $200 million and 340 million worldwide. Rush Hour 3, on the other hand, grossed over $250 million worldwide. Who Framed Roger Rabbit also domestically raked in over $156 million.
Though Murphy turned down those projects, he still has several high-grossing movies to his name. They include the Shrek franchise, the Beverly Hills Cop series, Coming to America, The Nutty Professor, Dr Dolittle, Dreamgirls, among others.
Murphy’s new documentary, Being Eddie, was also recently released on Netflix. The documentary focuses on the veteran actor and comedian’s career. But in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Murphy revealed that the project wasn’t initially intended to be the kind of documentary that it ended up being.
“There were no guidelines,” Murphy said when he was asked what made him decide to do the documentary and if there were off-limits topics or guidelines he wanted to set.
“It wasn’t going to be this type of documentary. [When] it started out, I was going to do stand-up comedy again. In 2011, I stopped making movies for about six years. When I got off the couch, I was like, ‘Let’s do Dolemite [Is My Name], and go back to Saturday Night Live, and do stand-up. We were going to do this documentary just to show what it’s like to put a [stand-up] show together.”
He added, “Then COVID hit, and everything shut down. Afterwards, I was like, ‘I’m not sure if I want to do stand-up,’ because I was paranoid about COVID. We worked on this thing for five, six years, and now, coincidentally, it’s my 50th year in show-business, a milestone for anybody in any business.”
