By Tonya Whitaker
NDG Staff Writer
The next movie for comedian Eddie Murphy will not tickle the funny bones of too many viewers.
The Tower Heist star recently signed on to play the former Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry in an HBO biopic. Spike Lee will direct the tale of Barry, who served as mayor of D.C. from 1979 to 1991 and 1995 to 1999. John Ridley, writer of The Wanda Sykes Show and Undercover Brother, is slated to write the script.
The release date has yet to be determined.
According to The Chicago Tribune, the movie will be based on the 1994 book Dream City by Washington, D.C. journalists Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood and The Nine Lives of Marion Barry, a documentary created by Dana Flow and Toby Oppenheimer.
Barry, a civil rights leader activist for Washington D.C., found himself in the middle of controversy in 1990 when he was videotaped smoking crack cocaine and arrested on drug charges. A jury sentenced Barry to six months in federal prison, and was released from prison in 1992. He was re-elected as mayor of Washington D.C. in 1995 and now serves as Ward 8 representative on the Council of District the of Columbia.
The announcement caps an interesting year for Murphy. In November, he step down as host of the 84th annual Oscars after producer Brett Ratner resigned from the Oscar gig because of insensitive remarks he made about homosexuals on the Howard Stern Show.
