As far back as we remember, there’s never been a return to stand-up that has been more highly anticipated than Eddie Murphy’s. Even though he hasn’t performed stand-up onstage since the 80’s, he is still consistently revered as one of the all time greats. And for anyone who is curious on what his transition back into the swing of things looks like, a new documentary has you covered.
John Davis and John Fox – who have worked with Murphy in the past on Doctor Doolittle, Dr. Doolittle 2, Daddy Day Care, Norbit, and Dolemite is My Name – spoke with Collider about the new documentary. Academy Award winner Angus Wall is serving as the film’s director.
They told Collider: “The thing that John and I are really excited about is, we are shooting a documentary right now about Eddie Murphy. We’re doing it with Angus Wall, Academy Award-winning editor, great documentarian. We’ve made five movies with Eddie and we love and adore him. I love it. I love him as a person. I love him as a performer. We love and adore him, and we’re doing his last stand-up with him. It’s going to be the last time he does stand-up. It’s going to be called The Last Stand. And we’ve been working on that for two and a half years.”
Davis added “There’s already been hours and hours and hours and hours of footage shot with him talking about his early days in the business, his perception of comedy, people who influenced him, understanding what the life of a stand-up is, what makes him different from other stand-ups. It’s really cool, interesting stuff,” said Davis. “To be able to be that close to comic genius is really one of the great benefits of being in this business for me, personally.”
As of right now, it remains to be seen whether this will be a standard 2 hour documentary or a multi-part docu-series. The pair also added that they will be producing Murphy’s return to the stage as a special, in addition to the documentary.
For fans of Murphy’s, this should undoubtedly be great news. As it seems like the end of an era for Murphy’s stand-up career, we can’t wait to see how it’s bookended.
