A rep for Murphy contacted Access Hollywood to say that the rumor is "not true," which fits with everything else in the world that we know about the movie to date, with the exception of Sun reporter Gordon Smart's claims about the sequel.

Of course, one of the things that we know about the sequel is that Warners are letting Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan take the lead on the movie's plot and casting, and another is that Nolan has admitted that he doesn't have a story in mind yet... which would suggest that any and all casting rumors - like, for example, Eddie Murphy starring as the Riddler - are the work of either optimistic or deluded minds. So can we all stop considering this even an exceptionally unlikely possibility now?

Eddie Murphy & Warner Respond To ‘Dark Knight’ Sequel Rumors [Access Hollywood]

The fandom world is calling for Smart's head for putting Eddie Murphy and Batman in the same sentence, let alone the same movie. But Smart, who claims people laughed at him when he touted Daniel Craig as the next Bond, insists that both Murphy and Shia LaBeouf will be in the next Dark Knight, or Gotham as he's calling it.

LaBeouf will play Robin — or as you may remember him, the one character whose presence would be enough to make Christian Bale walk out on the next movie.

Forget WB's on the record denials and common sense, Smart stands by his tip. You know, it's okay to admit you were drinking at work. Acceptance is the first step. [The Guardian]

The tabloid UK paper The Sun (no doubt ears perking from the recent Rachel Weisz Catwoman rumors) is reporting that Eddie Murphy has been cast — mind you, CAST — as The Riddler in the sequel to Dark Knight according to one insider.

Also the paper says Shia LaBeouf has been cast as Robin. Forget the fact that Christian Bale has announced he would rather do Newsies 2 than share the screen with Dick Grayson, but hey — why not?

According to The Sun:

A film insider said: “Chris wasn’t sure if he wanted to do another movie but as soon as he decided to, he got the wheels in motion. "Eddie’s a fantastic addition. Everyone’s excited to see what he does as the Riddler.”

Forget, also, the fact that the script hasn't been written and that rumors have been running wild for months now. There is just no way that Murphy is cast in the movie. How do these rumors take flight? Don't forget, not long ago people were seriously debating whether Cher was going to play Catwoman. I'm still hoping to start a rumor that Liza Minelli is playing the Penguin — pass it along!

[The Sun]

From the brain trust that brought us the family of farting Klumps comes yet another movie where Murphy can cross dress, screech, and do a little mad science. What's the best part of this disastrous news? The studio actually wants part three to be all about the family and further from the original. You know this idea is truly the darkest of two evils.

According to the Hollywood Reporter:

Although it has been eight years since the last "Nutty" came out, executives are interested in a new version that would follow "The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps."

As of right now Eddie Murphy is not attached to the project. But if Norbit taught us anything it's pretty difficult to keep this guy out of completely debasing himself for cash. So let's assume it's in the bag.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

I went to see Meet Dave with rock-bottom expectations, and found myself sort of enjoying it. It's not exactly funny, per se, but it's fun. (Does that make sense? A comedy can be fun, without actually ever making you laugh.) If your kids want to go see a dumb movie, and you've already seen Wall-E twice, you could do worse than seeing Meet Dave. It's about as good as Murphy's other family-friendly mad-science comedies, the Nutty Professor and Doctor Doolittle.

So. Murphy plays the spaceship as well as its captain. As the ship, he's sort of a funky robot, moving jerkily, especially at first, and acting wooden. There's some pretty decent physical comedy around Murphy learning to move around. And as the captain, he's doing his Coming To America accent and acting silly. There are some cute gags, including Murphy printing counterfeit money with his butt, struggling to understand basic social skills, and winning a hot-dog eating contest with robotic speed. Etc. etc.

The basic storyline is about Murphy's crewmembers going native, so to speak. They're all inhabiting the body of this faux human, and over time they become more and more immersed in human culture. The security officer turns out to be gay and starts snapping his fingers and making the human-sized Murphy dance fabulously. A random black guy on the crew starts talking in a stereotypical hip hop way, and the second in command gets a makeover and becomes beautiful. Etc. etc. The only crewmember who doesn't go native is the second in command, played by The Office's Ed Helms in his least funny role ever. (Seriously, what little funny this movie has dries up completely whenever Helms is on screen. And I've liked him in other stuff.)

I'm pretty sure the original screenplay by MST3K's Bill Corbett had something interesting to say about inhabiting bodies and being disconnected from the body you live in, but that's pretty much gone in the version as filmed by Norbit director Brian Robbins. What's left is some cute gags about little guys in hamster balls operating arm and leg joints, a guy who lives in Eddie Murphy's butt, and the poor guy in a wetsuit who's in Eddie's mouth and gets doused with whatever Eddie swallows. (Sort of like the "sperm" sequence in Woody Allen's Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask.)

The biggest surprise in Dave is that its alien visitors are far from benign: their mission is to launch a golf-ball-sized device that will drain the Earth's oceans to generate a new power source for their dying planet, which runs on salt. (Just roll with it.) Due to their bumbling, they lose this device and have to befriend a widow and her cute son who is (wait for it, wait for it) being bullied, in order to get it back. (I'm actually racking my brains to think of the last scifi movie I saw with a kid who wasn't bullied.) Do you think Dave the extraterrestrial will rekindle the widow's faith in love? And help the kid stand up to those mean bullies? It's like you're clairvoyant!

Anyway, it's your basic fish-out-of-water comedy mixed with your hero-pretending-to-be-someone-else romantic comedy. But let's get back to the little people inside Dave. It's very self-consciously Star Trekky, especially in the early scenes — supposedly Murphy is a huge Trek fan, who's still sad he ended up not being the wacky sidekick in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

There's also a love triangle of sorts. The ship's captain starts having romantic feelings for the widow, Gina (Elizabeth Banks). But meanwhile, his third in command (Gabrielle Union) has the hots for him and starts dressing vampy and showing him Frank Capra movies to win him over. Will he choose the woman who's 1,000 times his size? Or the tiny woman who baked him cookies in the academy and helped him become the space hero he is today? In a way, this subplot is a bit of a broadside against inter-species dating, although it's not made terribly explicit.

So basically, Meet Dave has two great concepts wrapped together: the tiny people being menaced by cats and basketballs and cups of coffee that are gargantuan to them; and the human-looking robot that's full of little people. Either of those concepts alone would make it worth watching at three A.M. with your favorite intoxicant. Together, they may actually make it worth watching in the theater with your favorite intoxicant, if you can smuggle it in or consume it in advance. Probably not a movie you want to watch sober, unless you've got little kids.

It's really hard to tell. It sounds as though Dave just got swept under the carpet. All the Eddie buzz this week is about whether he's quitting movies for good. (Answer: No, he isn't.) And whether Beverly Hills Cop 4 will be R-rated. I have to admit, the trailer for Dave left me a tad underwhelmed, and the few early reviews are not encouraging. Says Westside Today:

Meet Dave is, sadly, not [worth watching]. The Naked Cowboy's cameo is funnier than the rest of the movie, and that's downright tragic.

Still, Murphy's last collaboration with Dave director Brian Robbins, Norbit, made $96 million domestically. And Murphy has already re-teamed with Robbins for a third film, called A Thousand Words. Due in 2009, it's the story of a blase guy (Murphy) who learns that he'll die as soon as he finishes saying a thousand words. So, I guess, he has to be very, very laconic.

Movies we're looking forward to:

The Signal (Feb. 22). A weird signal takes over TVs, radios and cell phones, and makes everybody lose their shit. The tagline is "Do you have the crazy?" and it's become our new standard greeting. The buzz about this horror/SF hybrid from Sundance was pretty exciting. Divided into three segments, with three different directors, the stories of people driven berzerk by mass communications include killing sprees and demented sex. In the neopolis of Terminus City.

Outlander (early 2008). Okay. Alien versus Vikings. If that doesn't thrill you, your heart is made of dung. In a nutshell, Jim Caviezel (Passion of the Christ) is an alien whose spaceship crashes in ancient Norway. He soon realizes the crash had another survivor, a rampaging monster called the Moorwen. So Caviezel has to convince the feuding Viking clans to work together to destroy the best. It's like Beowulf, with space guns.

The Incredible Hulk (June 13). Ang Lee has lowered our expectations to the point where any Hulk movie that doesn't feature mutant poodles will thrill us. But it also sounds as though this version will stick to monster-movie basics. The Hulk's daddy issues will be in the background where they belong. And Edward Norton gives good man-with-monster-inside, judging from American History X.

The Dark Knight (July 18). Batman Begins wasn't perfect (Ra's Al Ghul was a boring villain) but it did have the right pulpy feel. And Knight could be the rare sequel that improves on the original, thanks to Heath Ledger's angry-nerd Joker. The viral Gotham Times site, with details on the crime war, overcrowded mental institutions and families fleeing Gotham, makes us feel director Christopher Nolan's Gotham is a real place, not just a fantasy backdrop.

CJ7 (Jan. 31). Stephen Chow is veering into science fiction after a string of kung-fu hits. This story of a semi-homeless guy who scavenges a toy for his son (played by a girl) will probably drip with sentimentality, but it also looks inventive and crazy as hell. The junkyard toy turns out to be an alien dog, which could kick Wall-E's ass in a cuteness contest. And then the boy/girl gets transported into space, and (judging from the trailer) things get kind of trippy.

Movies we're cautiously optimistic about:

Iron Man (May 2). The suit looks cool. We're glad they're keeping the storyline of Tony Stark being a weapon-mongering asshole who learns a lesson. But it also looks seriously cartoony, and it's from the director of Elf and Zathura.

Franklyn (unknown). The sequences of Ryan Philippe in his spooky mask in the city of crazy religions sound awesome. The other stuff, about people in the here and now having emotional crises, sounds less awesome and more IFC-ish. But we trust director Gerald Morrow when he says all three storylines finally come together somehow.

Death Race (Sept. 26). A super-champion racer (Jason Statham) is convicted of a crime he didn't commit. His only hope is to race cross-country in a tricked out car with rocket launchers and shit, for the amusement of the multitudes. Another remake, plus another movie by Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat). It'll probably be a guilty pleasure.

Cloverfield (Jan. 18) Better to think of this as a cheesy monster movie with an artsy twist (the handheld video cameras) than to build it up as a masterpiece in the making. The script from Drew (Buffy, Alias) Goddard will probably have some clever bits. And if Cloverfield rolls in enough clover, it could usher in a whole crazy new era of low-fi monster movies.

Speed Racer (May 9). It'll be a fun ride, judging from the trailer. But the Wachowskis are sticking too close to the source material's kiddie cartoon roots. And we're scared we'll have weird dreams about John Goodman's mustache after seeing this film.

Movies we're dreading in depths of our marrow:

Star Trek (Dec. 25) We've already explained our reasons why Star Trek should stay dead in general. But this movie, in particular, sounds horrendous. We lost all hope when they announced Leonard Nimoy is coming back as Spock. That means instead of a pure reboot, it has to be some sort of continuity-heavy restart. They'll have to use either time travel or flashbacks to justify Nimoy. But also, didn't we already go back to the beginning with the TV show Enterprise? We're predicting a very expensive flop that will make back its money overseas.

The Day The Earth Stood Still (Dec. 12) The words "Keanu Reeves as Klaatu" froze our blood. Keanu's biggest problem is his flat, stoner delivery, so having him play a super-bland alien might not be the best idea. But also, the original Earth Stood Still was such a product of Cold War anxieties that a remake will just feel like a nostalgia trip.

Babylon A.D. (Aug. 29). We love Vin Diesel and Michelle Yeoh, but this is just sounding more and more like a trainwreck. It had a troubled shooting, with delays, budget overruns and epic battles between Diesel and director Matthieu Kassovitz. Add in the fact that Kassovitz's previous film, Gothika, was universally panned. And the U.S. cut of Babylon will be 30 minutes shorter than the European release, so there's speculation our version may not even make sense.

Starship Dave (May 30). Pluto Nash wasn't enough. Eddie Murphy has to star in another kiddie SF comedy. And this one has a premise designed to lead to more slapstick than three Norbits put together. A group of tiny aliens led by Murphy travel to Earth in a spaceship disguised as a human (Murphy again), and they control him remotely. It sounds like an acid-induced remake of Steve Martin's All Of Me.

Hancock (July 2). The trailer confirmed our worst fears. After a string of serious roles, Will Smith is going to dust off his comedy chops to play a lame drunken superhero who falls for his image consultant's wife. There are two main problems right off the bat: Will Smith has done well in comedies where he's the straight man (Men In Black), but he's not so great at playing the fool. And superhero comedies like My Super Ex-Girlfriend usually don't have enough respect for the material to be funny.