Nick Offerman, Robin Thede, and Chris Redd Join Eddie Murphy’s New Holiday Movie from Amazon

Nick Offerman, Robin Thede, and Chris Redd have been cast in Candy Cane Lane, a new holiday movie from Eddie Murphy set to drop next year on Prime Video. Candy Cane Lane is the first movie in a three-picture first-look deal with Murphy, whose Coming 2 America dropped on the streamer in the early days of the pandemic. Offerman, Thede, and Redd join a cast that already includes Genneya Walton, Madison Thomas, and Thaddeus J. Mixson. Tracee Ellis Ross (Black-ish) and Jillian Bell (Brittany Runs a Marathon) were the first names added to the cast after Murphy.

According to Collider‘s report on the casting, the movie is written by Kelly Younger (Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto) and will draw inspiration from holiday experiences from Kelly’s own childhood.

Candy Cane Lane will be produced by Brian Grazer, and Reginald Hudlin, who have collaborated with Murphy on projects going back to 1992’s Boomerang. Hudlin, a producer and former BET executive who has worked intermittently in the comics industry for years, will serve as director. Production has already started on the film, which is filming in Los Angeles. Amazon Studios are producing, along with Murphy’s Eddie Murphy Productions and Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment.

There is no official synopsis or release date for Candy Cane Lane yet. 

Murphy can next be seen in You People, a new comedy from Netflix out soon.

In You People, “a new couple and their families find themselves examining modern love and family dynamics amidst clashing cultures, societal expectations and generational differences in this comedy from Kenya Barris.”

It’s likely that Candy Cane Lane will be a more family-friendly movie than many of Murphy’s comedies, and it might be interesting to see how the audience reacts to that, since some of his hardcore fans struggle with it.

“We made a movie that was not necessarily bound by our rating,” said Coming 2 America director Craig Brewer when that movie was released. “But it’s funny because I noticed that, you know, I’m like everybody else, I’ll look at Twitter and online, and people going, ‘Oh my God, what a travesty. This movie’s PG 13 and they’ve ruined it.’ But I would just argue that that’s not really true. If you’re really a fan of the first Coming to America … it has a little bit of this fairy tale theme. But the fairy tale element in the first movie that was so great was that Eddie’s Akeem was very innocent and naive and gentle, but he came to Queens and Queens was not. [laughs] and he loved everything that was even awful about Queens. And that was the humor in it.”