Eddie Murphy is in talks to take the role of The Pink Panther’s Inspector Clouseau, a comic figure made immensely popular by Peter Sellers in the 1960s and 70s.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Murphy is set to be cast in a new Pink Panther film directed by Sonic the Hedgehog’s Jeff Fowler. The film is described as a “live-action/CG hybrid … buddy cop movie”, with Murphy’s Clouseau teaming up with the cartoon Pink Panther that became popular as a result of a long-running series of film shorts and TV shows, after it was memorably featured in the first Pink Panther film’s opening credits.
The Pink Panther was originally the name of a celebrated diamond that featured in the series’ first film, released in 1963 and directed by Blake Edwards with Sellers starring as Clouseau opposite David Niven. Sellers starred in four further Pink Panther films, with a fifth, The Trail of the Pink Panther, released in 1982 after Sellers’ death using out-takes from previous films. Alan Arkin played the role in the 1968 feature Inspector Clouseau, while Roger Moore cameoed as Clouseau in the 1983 film Curse of the Pink Panther. The series was rebooted in 2006 with Steve Martin, who starred in two poorly received films, The Pink Panther and The Pink Panther 2, the latter released in 2009.
After achieving massive success in the 1980s on Saturday Night Live and in movie comedies such as Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop, Murphy moved into family pictures in the 90s and 2000s, with hits such as Dr Dolittle and The Nutty Professor, as well as voicing the key role of Donkey in Shrek. After a downturn in the 2010s, Murphy engineered a comeback of sorts with an award-winning performance as comic Rudy Ray Moore in 2019 biopic Dolemite Is My Name.
