Before Alan Alda was cast to play the Ponzi-scheming bad guy in the 2011 caper comedy “Tower Heist,” the film was set to a have a more recognizable real-life villain. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter for a recent profile, Chris Rock recalled that Eddie Murphy’s original pitch was for a movie about a gang that robs a villainous Donald Trump.
Rock said he was in producer Brian Grazer’s office when Murphy pitched the movie — a kind of Black “Ocean’s Eleven,” starring Rock, Dave Chapelle, and Chris Tucker as a gang that robs Trump Tower. Trump would be the bad guy, “Like Alan Rickman in ‘Die Hard,'” Rock told THR.
The movie morphed during development into what we know today, “Tower Heist,” the more middle-of-the-road movie with a great cast of, as Rock puts it, “a bunch of white people.”
Directed by Brett Ratner, the film follows employees of a luxury apartment building who,...
Rock said he was in producer Brian Grazer’s office when Murphy pitched the movie — a kind of Black “Ocean’s Eleven,” starring Rock, Dave Chapelle, and Chris Tucker as a gang that robs Trump Tower. Trump would be the bad guy, “Like Alan Rickman in ‘Die Hard,'” Rock told THR.
The movie morphed during development into what we know today, “Tower Heist,” the more middle-of-the-road movie with a great cast of, as Rock puts it, “a bunch of white people.”
Directed by Brett Ratner, the film follows employees of a luxury apartment building who,...
- 9/28/2020
- by Chris Lindahl
- Indiewire
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