Bill Murray missed out on the leading role in a planned Hollywood remake of hit German movie Toni Erdmann because he took too long to respond to the offer.
The acting veteran reveals actress Kristen Wiig, who starred in the all-female revamp of Murray’s classic Ghostbusters, pitched the idea to him last year (16), but his lack of organisation ended up costing him the gig.
“I’m in trouble with myself, because Kristen Wiig, who I think is so wonderful, sent me something and said, ‘Would you look at this thing?’ And I’m just not very organised,” Bill confessed on U.S. news show Squawk Box.
“For a while I lost it, and then I found it, and I’m actually travelling with it. But I didn’t get around to watching this thing that she wanted me to watch.”
When Bill eventually got back in touch with Kristen, he learned he had been replaced by Jack Nicholson.
“She said, ‘Well, Jack Nicholson took the job,'” he recalled, before quipping, “That guy’s a poacher. He’ll take anything!”
Wiig will reportedly produce the Hollywood version alongside The Big Short’s Adam McKay, and comedian Will Ferrell.
If the movie, about a father who desperately attempts to reconnect with his daughter, comes to fruition with Nicholson in the titular role, it will mark the 79-year-old’s big screen comeback after more than seven years away from the camera. He last acted in 2010 comedy drama How Do You Know, in which he appeared opposite Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd.
Ironically, his Easy Rider co-star Peter Fonda recently insisted Nicholson was done with Hollywood.
“I think he is basically retired,” Fonda said last month (Jan17). “I don’t want to speak for him, but he has done a lot of work and he has done very well as a person financially…”
The original Toni Erdmann, starring Sandra Huller and Peter Simonischek, is up for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2017 Oscars.
