Director Angus Wall (previously won Best Editing Oscars for his work on David Fincher‘s “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” and “The Social Network“), Eddie Murphy, and Netflix are teaming up for “Being Eddie,” a new documentary film coming out next month that will explore the wild life of the teenage stand-up as he became one of the biggest movie stars and voices in comedy.
If you were only aware of Murphy as solely a movie star, you could be forgiven, but there is a whole other side to Murphy’s rise to fame and life in entertainment. Murphy started out as a stand-up comedian at the young age of 17 and soon after became a main cast member of “Saturday Night Live” (after the original cast had left the show). One of the few American stand-up comedians of his generation who was thrust into superstardom in a rather quick fashion, after breaking out in the comedic action films “Beverly Hills Cop” and “48 Hrs.,” he would go on to lead popular stand-up specials and started to make his own movies with the 1989 peroid gangster comedy “Harlem Nights” (Murphy wrote, directed, and starred alongside legendary fellow stand-up comedians Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx).
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He even tried his hand at music with the late Rick James (yes, that Rick James), producing the earworm pop single “Party All The Time,” which ended up a decent hit (#2 on the Billboard charts), but Murphy would sort of distance himself from the world of music until his Oscar-nominated performance for the feature film version of the stage musical “Dream Girls.”
That’s not it, as the doc features the participation of Arsenio Hall, Brian Grazer, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Jamie Foxx, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jerry Bruckheimer, Jerry Seinfeld, John Landis, Kenan Thompson, Kevin Hart, Michael Che, Pete Davidson, Ruth Carter, Tracee Ellis Ross, Tracy Morgan, and more.
A logline for the doc provided by Netflix:
It goes without saying that there is only one Eddie Murphy. No other teen comedian shared a stage with Jerry Seinfeld at 17 and joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live” right out of high school. No actor has ever played a cop, a doctor, and a donkey — and dominated every facet of Hollywood he’s touched. Fewer still have been an A-list celebrity for over four decades, and never succumbed to its darker side. Murphy’s unusual combination of explosive charisma, focused ambition, raw talent, and deep-set circumspection puts him in a league of his own, and is on full display in “Being Eddie,” directed by two-time Oscar winner Angus Wall. The documentary gathers comedy and Hollywood legends like Dave Chappelle, Tracee Ellis Ross, Jamie Foxx, Jerry Seinfeld, Reginald Hudlin, and more to celebrate the Oscar-nominated actor and his nearly 50-year career that’s seen him break barriers, invent genres, and inspire generations of talent. For the first time ever, Murphy invites the public into his home to revisit his breathtaking body of work, all the while revealing the dazzling interior life that has long driven and grounded this once-in-a-century star.
John Davis, John Fox, Charisse Hewitt-Webster, Terry Leonard, and Kent Kubena are set as producers on the upcoming streaming doc. Check out the new trailer for “Being Eddie” as the documentary feature arrives on the streaming service on November 12.
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