Brett Ratner must really hate me. Of the top three simple pleasures I enjoy in everyday life -- food, wine and movies -- the man has to take some kind of sick pleasure in ruining at least one of them every few months. As I haven't seen him at any L.A. restaurants in a while, I suppose I wasn't that surprised to read that he's setting out to ruin yet another movie franchise that I love. I reported last week that the man who in slaughtered the third X-Men movie had just signed on to helm the 4th Beverly Hills Cop film, which will once more star Eddie Murphy. That alone was enough to put a damper on my day, but now he's revealed the icing on the cake: He's aiming to gear the film toward a PG audience.

Tags: Beverly Hills Cop, Bret Ratner, Eddie Murphy, Star Trek, X-Men

There are some things in life that terrorize us for a while, then seemingly disappear, only to show up again when you least expect it. The fake orange tan fad, for one. A raging herpes infection, for another. Then there's the possibility of another sequel to 1996's The Nutty Professor, which starred Eddie Murphy and various fat suits as the gaseous but mostly well-meaning Klump family. The modern-day Jekyll-and-Hyde story (a remake of a 1963 Jerry Lewis movie of the same name) had some laughs and general good will, which it managed to blow away a few years later with a gale force fart, thanks to The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. It's been eight years of blessed silence since then, but the studio and production company that brought you the first two movies are working on a third.

Tags: Eddie Murphy, sequel, The Nutty Professor, The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps

Let's play a guessing game. What movie, if any, will unseat Will Smith's Hancock this weekend? Well, let's look at what's opening and make an educated guess. First up is the sequel to that OTHER superhero movie that's opening in July, Hellboy II. The first one made money, and is something of a cult classic, and (like Dark Knight) Hellboy II reunites its cast with the director of its predecessor. I loved the original film, but this in no way has the same drawing power as Will Smith. Fans of Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo Del Toro will go, as will Hellboy fans, but that's not enough.

Tags: Brendan Fraser, Cuba Gooding Jr., Eddie Murphy, Hancock, Harold, Hellboy II, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Meet Dave, MST3K, Norbit, Will Smith

Forbes' list of Hollywood's best paid actors was released this week, and even in this shit economy the boys of the big screen are certainly not hurting for cash. The girls aren't hurting either, but no woman managed to break the top ten in earning. My get-paid-less-for-doing-the-same-job-in-Tinsel-Town bitch session will commence in the break room here at Moviefile headquarters around 12:30, but in the meantime, I'll skip right to the top earners.

Tags: Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Bruce Willis, Eddie Murphy, Forbes, Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mike Myers, Nicolas Cage, Will Ferrell, Will Smith

Sometimes you get a nice slow one pitched across the plate. To promote Meet Dave, the new Eddie Murphy movie opening July 11th, Twentieth Century-Fox is using a 15-foot replica of Murphy's head. The 3-ton noggin has made appearances in Washington D.C., and should be in Times Square by the time you read this. The latest proof that all marketing people should be tarred and feathered is also interactive. No, it doesn't scream profanities! This is the PG-rated Ed-DEE, safe for kids and blue-haired old ladies! It's interactive because, as the newscaster on this site explains in the web video, you can actually climb into the replica of Eddie Murphy's head. Why on Earth would you want to do that, you ask? So you can find out what the hell Eddie was thinking when he made Norbit.

Tags: Eddie Murphy, head, Meet Dave, Norbit, Pluto Nash, promotion, sci-fi

Film industry relationships are complicated. Most relationships are, but at least with marriages and dating, we at least have some frame of reference. Our friends or family members have been through the same things we have, and can share their experiences with us. And if not, we can always watch the wack-jobs on Maury to make ourselves feel better. Let's look at the relationship troubles between DreamWorks SKG and Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, as reported by Zap2it, in terms we might be able to relate to.

Tags: Ben Stiller, David Geffen, DreamWorks, Eddie Murphy, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Maury, Norbit, Paramount, Steven Spielberg, Universal, Viacom