Chris Tucker

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

 

  1. Chris Rock, Lethal Weapon 4, 1998.   One sequel is enough! Roger Ebert’s Chicago Tribune review made #1 a hit way beyond Warner’s meagre expectations He felt #4 was mere out-takes…  All the usual black suspects – Combs (aka Puff Daddy in those day), Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Chris Tucker, Larenz Tate- rejected the gay cop, Lee Butters. Rock rolled, but as, suddenly, the father of Danny Glover’s grandchild! As usual,  Glover said: “I’m too old for this shit!”. This time he meant it, as he and Mel Gibson finally reached the ages of Murtaugh and Riggs as scripted back in 1986.
  2. Jamie Foxx, Any Given Sunday, 1999.    The difference between the two being that  Foxx  was  actually a football quarterback.in high school.
  3. Martin Lawrence, Black Knight, 2001.      With this salary approaching the $20m mark, Lawrence happily agreed  to be  transported to medieval times. Tucker was just very wary. “When you’re young and you’re black, you do a bad movie and you’re through.”
  4. Mike Epps, Friday After Next, 2001.  Tucker passed on an invite to continue his 1994 participation from the first Friday,.  So his Smokey helped restructure Day-Day – allowing Epps to reprise his 1999 participation from the second of the Ice Cube trilogy: Next Friday.
  5. Steve Martin, The Pink Panther, 2004.    Steve Martin, The Pink Panther, 2005.      Kevn Kline, Mike Myers and  Kevin Spacey were also among producer-director Ivan Reitman’s crazy ideas in making a (re)hash out of the genius  of Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards. Reitman then passed and the resultant  mess was not released until 2006 because, as Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert put it: “It’s like the high school production of something you saw at Steppenwolf.” 
  6. Tom Cruise, Knight and Day, 2009.       Tucker and Eva Mendez in Wichita became a reunion of the Vanilla Sky team once Cruise expressed an interest in being The Man of Mystery – and called up Diaz. And still flopped. Final title was, literally, senseless.
  7. Casey Affleck, Tower Heist, 2010.   Eddie Murphy’s plan was an African-American Ocean’s Eleven – with Martin Lawrence, Dave Chappelle, Mike Epps, Katt Williams and… Chris x 2: Rock and Tucker. All that changed when Ben Stiller took the lead for $15m… double Murphy’s pay-cheque (for Rock’s old role). Times had changed.
  8. Richard Ayoade, The Watch, 2011.    Chris  was seen about Jamarcus in the neighborhood watch comedy – until it passed to the Cambridge Footlights find from The Mighty Boosh.   (Pity it was in a Ben Stiller farce).
  9. Jamie Foxx, Django Unchained, 2011.
  10. Kevin Hart, The Upside, 2017.    Idris Elba, Jamie Foxx and the two Chrises Rock and Tucker were all in the frame for quadriplegic Bryan Cranston’s helper In a typically hollow-wood re-hash of a gigantic French hit, Untouchables, 2011.  The abundantly charismatic Paris star, Omar Sy, won several Hollywood films as a result of his Cesar-winning performance.  Coming nowhere close, Hart simply lacked heart.

 

 

 

 

 Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls:  11