Good news, GOM-heads: Your favorite grouchy older males are coming back into fashion, with Deadline reporting that a reboot of the 1995 “Old man yells at older man” classic Grumpy Old Men is in the works. Specifically, the Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau team-up is being revived with comedy star Eddie Murphy in one of the leading roles.
The big question here, obviously, is who Murphy—whose latest starring role was in 2012's A Thousand Words, and who’s currently working on a biopic about Rudy Ray Moore —will be butting heads with and battling against over the heart of some sexy senior. Meanwhile, Tim Story—who just wrapped up shooting on the latest Shaft film, with Samuel L. Jackson—is set to direct and produce.
Of course, it’s worth noting that not even the venerable Grumpy/Grumpier Old Men franchise is immune to Hollywood’s ever-encroaching standards of ageism: While Murphy’s career over the last decade has certainly established his grumpy—dare we say, even grouchy—bona fides, at 57, he’s still more than 13 years younger than the 70 and 75 that Lemmon and Matthau were, respectively, when the first film came out. Turns out that not even feuding grandpas are immune to the entertainment industry’s demand for younger, sexier stars. (You know: Relatively.)