So what happens when one remake of an Eddie Murphy remake fails? Well, somebody just goes and makes a different one. Deadline reports that a new Nutty Professor movie is in the works from Project X Entertainment’s James Vanderbilt, William Sherak, and Paul Neinstein, the same group who are working on the Scream revival right now.
The 1963 comedy The Nutty Professor is one of Jerry Lewis’ classics, with the comic legend playing a nerdy professor who develops a formula that turns him into the bold, confident, handsome jerk Buddy Love. The film was reimagined in 1996 with Eddie Murphy in the lead and it was a gigantic hit, earning $274M and spawning a sequel, Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, in 2000.
This is still very early on. No word on any creatives involved.
The timing is interesting, though. Earlier this year we saw Robert Downey Jr.’s failed Dolittle reboot, a property which Murphy had turned into a hit franchise in the ’90s. Obviously, the hope is for The Nutty Professor to follow in Murphy’s successful footsteps and launch a bunch of sequels.
