The classic comedy Eddie Murphy is dying to remake: “That’s what I wanted to do”
In 2001, a zany comedy was released that likely made Eddie Murphy do a double-take. This wacky chase movie followed six teams of people racing each other across the 563 miles between a Las Vegas casino and a New Mexico train station to be the first to reach a locker containing $2million. The movie was silly, over the top, and poked not-so-subtle fun at the greed of the human race, most of whom will do almost anything to be rich.
That movie was called Rat Race, and it was directed by Airplane! spoof genius Jerry Zucker. It starred John Cleese as the eccentric casino owner who instigates the race, and an extensive list of funny faces as the teams struggling for supremacy. Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Lovitz, and Wayne Knight joined young stars of the time like Cuba Gooding Jr, Seth Green, Amy Smart, and Breckin Meyer, and the movie supplied a decent hit rate of jokes and hijinks, without ever truly distinguishing itself as something special.
The reason Murphy may have been slightly confused or perturbed by the movie, though, was that it bore more than a passing resemblance to a classic comedy he has always wanted to remake. In fact, even in 2025, with Rat Race long forgotten by audiences, Murphy is still talking about making that film again.
“There are a bunch of ideas that we have,” he said during an appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show. “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is an old movie from the ’60s that I want to remake and do with a who’s who of black comics. That’s what I wanted to do; that would be amazing…So, yeah, hopefully that comes together.”
The lengthily titled It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was a 1963 comedy directed by Stanley Kramer (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) and starring Spencer Tracy alongside a cross-section of funny faces of the day: Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Micky Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, Edie Adams, and Buddy Hackett.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. The movie features four groups of people driving on California State Route 74 who encounter a dying convict whose car has crashed. He tells them that he has buried $350,000 in Santa Rosita State Park “under a big W.” A madcap race ensues with everyone desperate to reach the cash first.
OK, yes, if you thought of the classic cat burglar Simpsons episode, then you get a gold star – the ending of that episode was indeed a reference to It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. But the story setup and rib-tickling race that ensues, while not exactly the same, are clearly what inspired Rat Race.
Ideally, Murphy’s version of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World would easily eclipse Rat Race, and he plans on doing that by making sure the star power involved is as impressive as the ’63 classic. “It’s one of my favourite movies of all time,” Murphy told Entertainment Tonight. “If I do it, if the script turns out right, it’s gonna be a cast of all the…comedians. Anybody that was funny over the last 30 years is going to be in this movie!”
As of 2025, Murphy revealed that he intends his new in-law, Martin Lawrence, to be one of the stars – and he’d been planning that long before Lawrence’s daughter, Jasmin, married his son, Eric. He is also finally, after many years, close to receiving a finished script from Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’s Jez Butterworth, meaning the film he’s been dying to remake for decades may be just around the corner.
