After successfully launching Coming 2 America on the streamer, Eddie Murphy has signed a first-look deal with Amazon Studios for three films, per the Hollywood Reporter.
The official sequel to Coming to America dropped on Amazon Prime Video earlier this year, theGrio previously reported. The big-budget film proved to be a hit, breaking the streaming record for Amazon at the time.
The actor’s three-picture and first-look deal has Murphy set to star in three upcoming films. He also will develop original projects for Amazon Studios, with the potential for him to appear in a lead role.
Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, shared in a statement, “Eddie is a legend both in front of and behind the camera. With undeniable comedic and dramatic genius, he consistently delivers entertaining, original stories and characters to audiences around the world.”
It’s no wonder Amazon is excited about the partnership with Murphy. Per Nielsen SVOD content ratings obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, “Coming 2 America was the most-streamed title in the U.S. the week of its premiere, according to Nielsen data, drawing 1.4 billion minutes of total viewing for the week of March 1 to 7 among U.S. viewers.”
Murphy sat down with theGrio earlier this year to discuss returning to Zamuda and the world he originally created in Coming to America.
He shared with theGrio, “I wanted to do a good movie. I didn’t want to do a movie that didn’t capture the spirit of the first movie. We worked on the script for four years before we, you know, got it right…it was a process. From the very beginning though, it was wanting [the sequel] to be good, but it wasn’t a pressure thing.”
He added in the interview, “[Coming to America] really has the same stuff that cult movies have with the fans, the way they feel about those movies. This movie is like that. It just actually got me kind of excited. It was like, ‘Wow, people are invested in it like that.’”
When talking about getting back into the iconic character of Akeem, he said, “Getting back into the character of, for me, I’ve always been able to just turn it on and off when I’m doing characters…these characters—this movie is on so much, it’s kind of like, it’s in the background and you see it. The characters are just around so it was easy to just jump back in.”
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