When a sequel makes less than its predecessor, it’s generally a pretty good indication that the public doesn’t care about that franchise anymore.  Even the crappiest sequels make more than the original (see X Men 3, The Matrix sequels), after all, they’ve basically already had a two-hour trailer and a few years to penetrate the public consciousness like your mom in a bathroom stall during a Jets game.  On that note, The Nutty Professor grossed $273 million in ’96, its sequel did $161 million in 2000, and now Eddie Murphy says he’s writing a third one.

“You know what, there might be another ‘Nutty Professor,’” Eddie Murphy told Access Hollywood‘s Shaun Robinson at the LA premiere of “Shrek Forever After” on Sunday, breaking the news of the possible sequel’s latest development. “We kind of wrote something that might be kind of funny.”
Whether or not the film hits theaters, he added, depends on just how funny it is.
“If the studios want to do it, we’ll do it,” he told Shaun. “If you don’t see it, the studio was like, ‘This isn’t funny.’” [AccessHollywood]

I don’t know, that didn’t seem to stop them with your last 12 movies.  I think they should just get Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, and Tyler Perry together and have them remake Sex and the City in drag and fat suits.  Remember I said that.  If they make that they owe me a million dollars.

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We complain a lot about how movies are all remakes and stunt casting and undisguised toy commercials, but all it takes is the occasional news out of Broadway to remind us that it could be worse.  That crappy movie you wasted $12 on will probably spawn a crappy play with singing and dancing and Bob Saget playing the lead for one week only and no special effects.  On that note, 83-year-old Jerry Lewis is set to make his theater directing debut on a musical version of his 1963 film The Nutty Professor.

With music by Academy Award, Emmy Award, Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Marvin Hamlisch and a book and lyrics by multiple Tony Award winner and Grammy nominee Rupert Holmes, the musical is aiming for a bow on Broadway in the 2010-11 season.

Lewis stated, “I was born with show business in my blood and working on Broadway gets it coursing through my veins like no other place can. Marvin and Rupert have given one of my favorite and most enduring films…a hilarious and gorgeous adaptation for Broadway and I could not be happier. Does this story sing and dance? You bet it does.” [Playbill]

It sings, it dances, it falls asleep on the couch and complains about the Orientals.  I’m a-tellin ya, Bimbo, this heah hootenanny is the elephant’s eyebrows.  Hold on… Cholly, I can’t hear a word this dame’s a-singin.  Can someone replace the hydro tubes on her amplification box?

Here’s an idea that could only sound good to an idiot studio exec: another Nutty Professor sequel!

An open call is out to writers for their take on a potential third entry.

Although it has been eight years since the last “Nutty” came out, executives are interested in a new version that would follow “The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps.

The sequel to 1996′s “The Nutty Professor,” “Klumps” had a less corpulent boxoffice gross than its predecessor, earning $162 million worldwide vs. the $270 million of the first installment.

Murphy is not attached to a new “Nutty”; his involvement would be contingent on the writer, director and other elements. [THR]

So put down that semi-autobiographical first novel you’ve been working on, Hemingways, Nutty Professor 3 needs YOU.  No matter that there’ve already been two Big Momma’s Houses (with a third in the works), a Norbit, countless Madea movies, and a not so subtle parody in Tropic Thunder called “The Fatties”, the first two Nutty Professors made money, and by the transitive property of retards, this one’s going to make money too, dammit.

The only way I’d be on board with this is they cast Gary Busey and Jeff Conaway and made a documentary about trying to film the movie.