Whenever he’s not too busy cheering on his Key & Peele collaborator’s Oscar for writing Get Out or making fun of Thomas Jane’s mom in the latest trailer for The Predator, Keegan-Michael Key is working with the legendary Eddie Murphy. At least that’s according to The Hollywood Reporter, which revealed on Thursday that the comedy actor has signed on to join the comic’s new movie currently in production with Netflix, Dolemite Is My Name! The biopic of comedian and blaxploitation film producer Rudy Ray Moore is slated to drop sometime in 2019.
Per THR, Key will be playing the playwright Jerry Jones, who Moore “convinced” to write the screenplay for the original Dolemite film in 1975:
Moore has been referred to by some as the Godfather of Rap for his reciting of raunchy, sexually explicit rhymes in his comedy, often depicting pimps, prostitutes, players and hustlers… The son of a sharecropper, he broke through in 1970s Hollywood when his underground records became popular in black communities.
Moore used the proceeds to produce and star in Dolemite, a notorious blaxploitation movie featuring a pimp with a harem of kung fu-fighting prostitutes. The film was an underground sensation.
Aside from Murphy and Key, who play Moore and Jones respectively, Dolemite Is My Name! also stars Wesley Snipes, Mike Epps, Craig Robinson, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, T.I. and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt‘s very own Tituss Burgess. Murphy’s attachment to the project was first announced earlier this month.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
