Production is currently underway on one of the more high-profile pilots of this season, and some debut images from the set have landed online.  The Shield and Last Resort vet Shawn Ryan serves as executive producer and showrunner on the potential Beverly Hills Cop series, and last night he shared a few images from the set that gave us our first look at the return of Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley alongside his son, played by Brandon T. Jackson.  The show’s focus is centered on the young Aaron Foley and is described as a police procedural with a comedic element.  Murphy appears in the pilot and will potentially have a recurring role on the show should CBS pick it up to series.

Hit the jump for more on the series and to check out the images.

As we await the 85th Academy Award nominations announcement on Thursday morning, we now have a look at the opposite end of the 2012 film spectrum.  The 33rd Golden Raspberry Award nominations have been announced, celebrating the very worst of what 2012′s movie slate had to offer.  Leading the pack is The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 with 10 nominations, as the film landed a nomination in every single category.  The Twilight closer will go head-to-head with Battleship, A Thousand Words, That’s My Boy, and The Oogieloves in Big Balloon Adventure for the Worst Picture title.

It’s easy to beat up on the Twilight franchise, and even though I wouldn’t go so far as to call Breaking Dawn – Part 2 a good movie, it’s in no way the worst movie of the year.  The sheer amount of beheadings alone in director Bill Condon’s climactic fight sequence is enough to make the movie worth watching.  Anyway, hit the jump to check out the full list of Razzie Awards nominations.

I’ll be the first one to give Hollywood’s reboots/adaptations a chance, but when test footage apparently gets posted online by the director, either the film has been eighty-sixed or there has been some sort of security breach. Such is the quandry with the live-action adaptations of Marvin the Martian and Hong Kong Phooey, which have had a few short minutes of test footage supposedly posted by writer/director Alex Zamm. The Martian picture appears to be more of a self-contained short while Phooey, voiced by Eddie Murphy - though it certainly sounds like an impersonator here, is more of a clip. Hit the jump to check them out.

It looks as if that Twins sequel is moving forward.  Deadline reports that The Book of Mormon star Josh Gad and Ryan Dixon have been tapped to pen the treatment for Triplets, with Dixon handling the script.  The follow-up has Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito reprising their roles from the 1988 comedy as mismatched siblings.  As previously reported, the follow-up will find them getting in touch with a third brother played by Eddie Murphy.  Hit the jump to see what Schwarzenegger told us about the sequel when we spoke to him on the set of the upcoming actioner The Last Stand.

We recently reported that a Beverly Hills Cop TV series had landed at CBS with franchise star Eddie Murphy attached for at least the pilot.  Previous reports indicated that the Shawn Ryan (The Shield) show would center on Axel Foley’s son Aaron in a blending of a buddy-cop and fish-out-of-water procedural.  Now it looks as if Brandon T. Jackson (Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief) is in final negotiations to join the series as the young Foley.  Ryan will write the pilot for the Sony Pictures Television production.  Hit the jump for more on Jackson and Beverly Hills Cop.

The only thing CBS loves more than reviving old series is the police procedural, so to combine the two must be an exciting prospect indeed.  As such, the network as given the greenlight for a series based on the movie Beverly Hills Cop, which originally starred Eddie Murphy as a quippy Detroit detective Axel Foley who moves to Los Angeles.

The new series will not move far from its roots — not only will Murphy reprise his role for the pilot (at least, if not more), the TV show will pick up where the movie franchise left off, this time focusing on Foley’s son.  In an interesting addition, The Shield creator Shawn Ryan will serve as showrunner, which could give the series more weight.  For more on the project, hit the jump.

A television series iteration of the action comedy classic Beverly Hills Cop has been in the works for some time now, but it looks as if things are finally moving forward.  Vulture reports that Eddie Murphy is teaming up with The Shield creator Shawn Ryan and Sony Pictures Television on the television adaptation, but the best part is that Murphy has agreed to take an on-camera role in the show as well.  The Beverly Hills Cop TV series is being pitched to networks as we speak, and I’d be shocked if the show didn’t find a solid home very soon.

Murphy expressed his intent to appear on the show last December, saying he’d star in the pilot and would “show up here and there” throughout the rest of the series.  Hit the jump for more. 

It’s always a fun treat when a now-famous actor pops up in a small role in an older movie you haven’t re-watched in a while.  We previously posted a “Before They Were Famous” supercut, but now someone has edited together a montage of actors in their very first feature film roles. While you’re most likely aware of the majority of these appearances, I’m willing to bet you’ll find at least a few surprises in this video.  I had no idea Jon Hamm was in Clint Eastwood’s “old guys can be astronauts too” movie Space Cowboys, but I now feel compelled to move the pic to the top of my Netflix queue.

Watch Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen, Emma Thompson, Zach Braff and many more make their feature debut after the jump.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he was ready to get back into the movie business following his tenure as Governator of California, no one was really expecting him to dive headfirst back into Hollywood.  Cut to 2012 and the actor has already shot a substantial role in The Expendables 2, just wrapped his “comeback” starring role in The Last Stand, and is poised to team up with Sylvester Stallone for the actioner The Tomb.  Oh yeah, and a Twins sequel.  Just last week we learned that Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are planning to reprise their roles from the 1988 comedy Twins in a sequel called Triplets with Eddie Murphy playing their long-lost sibling.

We got the chance to speak with Schwarzenegger in a recent group interview and the actor talked about the idea behind Triplets, how his personal life has affected the likelihood of a sequel to True Lies, and he also had some choice words for the most recent entry in the Terminator franchise.  Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

One of these things is not like the other. Actually, none of these things are like any of the other…and that’s what made the premise of Ivan Reitman’s 1988 film Twins work. But how do you further capitalize on the hilarious assumption that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are twin brothers? Add in Eddie Murphy as a long-lost sibling and call it Triplets. DeVito talked about the possibility of a sequel in an recent interview with Steve. Currently, there is no director attached, but Reitman will produce the project via his Montecito Picture Co. The sequel is in the process of recruiting writers as no substantial creative talks have occurred yet. Hit the jump for more on Triplets.

“Men on a mission” films and the heist genre (arguably the same thing) in general are virtually impossible to screw up. Even Brett Ratner, a director that (perhaps unfairly) gets beaten up regularly for the insensitive things he says in the press, and his party-boy image can deliver a film like Tower Heist, and it plays fairly well at home. You’ve got an ensemble of actors with Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy playing against Michael Pena, Casey Affleck, Mathew Broderick, Tea Leoni, Gabourey Sidibe and Alan Alda, and with that cast you’re not going to get bored, even if you can see where the film needed a little more oomph. It’s all about seeing a plan come together, and how that plan gets complicated. And if the film isn’t as great as it could have been, well there’s that, but it’s just good enough. Our review of Tower Heist on Blu-ray follows after the jump.

With a whole slew of comedies both spectacular and downright terrible in his past, Eddie Murphy is looking to take on the most serious role of his career. The Washington Post reports Murphy is slated to star in a biopic of former Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry for HBO Films. Even more interesting is that Spike Lee is also attached to direct the film which looks to use various sources (like the 1994 book Dream City) to tell the life story of Barry, the first prominent civil-rights activist to become chief executive of a major American city and a man who has endured various political and legal controversies and has somehow maintained his popularity and influence on the nation’s capitol. This just might be a film that paints Murphy in a new light and could open the door for more dramatic roles in his future. The actor received an Oscar nomination for Dreamgirls previously, but his role was still pretty comedic, so this will certainly be a big change of pace. Stay tuned.

I’m going to bypass my usual opening paragraph musings this week and simply wish everyone a Happy Veterans Day weekend. Given that I don’t have any immediate family or friends who serve, I won’t claim to know the first thing about the sacrifices that each serviceman/woman and their respective families and friends are continually asked to make. I reap all of the benefits of their service without any of the concessions. As a result, I owe a debt of gratitude to each and every one of them.

In this week’s “Top 5″ installment you can find the first trailer for Snow White and the Huntsman, a cornucopia of interviews for Immortals and Cars 2, new set images from the set of The Expendables 2 featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme, and a look at the road that led Billy Crystal and Brian Grazer to the top of the 2012 Oscars. Hit the jump for a brief recap and link to each.

Remember that brief moment where it looked like Eddie Murphy was going to turn his career around and go back to being that guy we all liked in the 80s?  Then he dropped hosting the Oscars after his moron Tower Heist director Brett Ratner resigned, and now there’s a new trailer for another one Murphy’s high-concept “comedies”, A Thousand Words.  In all fairness, Murphy made this movie almost a year ago, but it’s a strong reminder of why we all want to forget about him. The movie is about a guy who only has a thousand words left before he dies, which seems like a strong premise for a drama, but instead it looks like everyone involved said, “Let’s make Liar, Liar 2“.  At least it’s a nice reminder that we should all heed the warnings of Cliff Curtis.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The film also stars Kerry Washington, Clark Duke, and Allison Janney.  A Thousand Words opens March 23, 2012.

Yesterday, Brett Ratner resigned as the producer of the 84th Academy Awards after he made homophobic remarks to the surprise of no one. Now host Eddie Murphy has followed his Tower Heist director’s lead and exited the awards ceremony.  Academy president Tom Sherak released a statement about Murphy’s departure, saying: ” I appreciate how Eddie feels about losing his creative partner, Brett Ratner, and we all wish him well.”  The Academy usually hires its producer and host well in advance in order to build buzz and provide plenty of lead time on the ceremony.  Now there will be a bit of a scramble to bring on a new producer and host with only three months to go until the 84th Academy Awards.  Maybe this time the Academy will hire a producer who is unlikely to say something like “Rehearsal is for fags.”

Hit the jump for the press release, which includes a statement from Murphy.  The 84th Academy Awards will take place on February 26, 2012.  Someone place a call to Neil Patrick Harris right now.