Jamie Foxx Looking to Join Jim Henson Company’s THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS
Jamie Fox is in negotiations to star in The Jim Henson Company’s upcoming film The Happytime Murders. The movie is described as a raucous R-rated comedy that will combine live-action characters with puppets.
The project is set to be directed by Brian Henson, and the “story follows puppet stars of an iconic TV show The Happytime Gang who are some of the biggest celebrities around. But off-camera, the family-friendly cast leads the kinds of lives that would make a tabloid writer blush. When the Happytime Gang stars begin to be mysteriously murdered, two mismatched detectives – one a type-A, take-no-prisoners human with a secret and the other a crass, hard-drinking puppet with a connection to one of the victims – must put aside their differences to stop the killings and catch the culprit, all the while trying to resist the temptation to murder each other.”
Deadline says that Foxx will play Detective Edwards, and they offer additional details on the characters saying that Edwards is “a LAPD cop who must re-team with his former partner Phil, a drinker and philanderer who is not keen on Edwards’ good-cop persona. Together they try to solve the murders, all the while bumping heads on each other’s methods.”
It’ll be fun to see Foxx jump in a role like this playing off of puppets. The screenplay comes from Todd Berger, Dee Robertson, and Erich and Jon Hoeber who worked on Red and Red 2, which were spectacularly entertaining movies. The Happytime Murders sounds like it will be a blas,t and I can’t wait to see what comes of it.
Foxx is currently set to play little John in the Robin Hood: Origins film.