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Coming to America, the 1988 comedy starring Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, remains a classic in many households around the world. The anticipated sequel from Paramount Pictures is reportedly now moving to Amazon Studios, with a wintertime release date attached.
As the moviegoers around the world are left with limited options due to the coronavirus pandemic, theaters are shuttering thus pushing streaming back into the mix. With Disney Plus and Amazon Prime employing the strategy of video on demand, Hollywood is slowly shifting to the home theater model for the foreseeable future.
As Deadline reports, Coming 2 America will now be the property of Amazon Studios, with a price tag reportedly around $125 million if the whispers behind the scenes are true. A date of December 18, 2020, has been set for Coming 2 America, which stars the aforementioned Murphy and Hall, along with Wesley Snipes, Tracy Morgan, Leslie Jones, Shari Headley, and James Earl Jones among others.
The premise of the film finds Prince Akeem Joffer (Murphy) ready to ascend to the crown as King of Zamunda but discovers he has fathered a child, Lavelle, in the United States, played by Jermaine Fowler. Jones plays the mother of the son in the film. Prince Akeem and his best friend Semmi (Hall) return to America once again to meet Lavelle and bring him back to Zamunda.
While Deadline’s report speaks in tentative terms, Variety issued a report that reads a lot more definitively in terms of the deal being closed. The publication adds that what was potentially holding up a deal was a marketing tie-in with Crown Royal, and McDonald’s, which is spoofed in the film’s earlier iteration as McDowell’s, and in need of Murphy’s approval.
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Photo: WENN
