MURPHY TO PORTRAY PRYOR IN UPCOMING CONDON FLICK

According to Entertainment Weekly, writer/director Bill Condon, who just completed his debut run as producer of the 2009 Academy Awards (no wonder it was a bonafide musical), is shopping his script Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said? to the studio subsidiaries and independent distributors around town.

Eddie Murphy is attached to star. Sources are saying that Fox Searchlight, the studio behind this year's big Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire, is interested in the film.

Condon, who most recently wrote and directed Dreamgirls, had the Pryor biopic set up at The Weinstein Company but was able to pull it out when the indie outfit put it into turnaround. He initially was hoping to secure $30 million to produce the film, but that number, sources say, has dropped down to $25 million. Murphy, who has featured Pryor impersonations in his act as far back as the 1987 concert movie Raw, seems a likely choice for this role.