Eddie Murphy: Punctuality not one of his star requirements?

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In today’s Times, my colleague John Horn takes aim at Eddie Murphy, saying the veteran funnyman can barely open a movie anymore. It turns out that Murphy’s growing catalog of duds (‘Meet Dave,’ ‘The Adventures of Pluto Nash’ and ‘Showtime’) is starting to eclipse solid performances of hits like ‘Norbit,’ ‘Daddy Day Care’ and ‘Doctor Dolittle.’ After interviewing several tracking firms, Horn is predicting that Murphy’s new Paramount film, ‘Imagine That,’ due out Friday, could be another flopperoo, struggling to gross more than $10 million in its opening weekend, since its only core audience is prepubescent girls.

But one line in Horn’s story really grabbed my attention. In the course of explaining why Murphy has such a terrible reputation inside Hollywood (he famously failed to show up for the premiere of ‘Meet Dave’), he noted that the producers of ‘Imagine That’ had to add a number of extra shooting days to the filming schedule to accommodate Murphy’s short working days. This is commonplace if you’re dealing with a child star, who can only work a limited number of hours. But why would a perfectly healthy 48-year-old movie star need to limit his working hours?

According to several people who have worked on recent Murphy movies, the star is famous -- perhaps we should say notorious -- for not showing up to work on time. To hear from someone who worked with Murphy on a recent film, Murphy was habitually 90 minutes late for his call time. If the star was due on set at 10 a.m., he would show up at 11:30 a.m. He often ends up only working five or six hours a day, so many of his productions factor in extra production days to accommodate his schedule.

Visitors to the ‘Imagine That’ set on the Paramount lot said that Murphy was treated like a visiting pasha, with a fortress-like compound of half a dozen trailers that one eyewitness described as being ‘totally over the top -- it was like Murphy had his own personal RV park.’

I asked Horn: How does Murphy get away with it, especially in the new era of austerity in showbiz?

‘It’s like anything else in Hollywood,’ says Horn, adding that Murphy’s publicist declined to comment for his story. ‘No one is willing to say no to somebody they perceive to be a movie star.’

A lot of people who’ve been tracking the performance of Murphy’s movies aren’t so sure that he’s a reliable box-office force anymore. From what box-office observers tell me, he’s not dead -- especially if he does something right in his wheelhouse, like another ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ film, as has been rumored -- but many believe that Murphy now operates in a very narrow niche. His films just aren’t guaranteed moneymakers anymore.