Danny DeVito has signed on to direct Crazy Eddie, a biopic of a jailed American entrepreneur which will mark his first outing behind the camera since the unfairly slated 2002 comedy, Death To Smoochy.
The movie will tell the life story of Eddie Antar, owner of a chain of electronics stores called Crazy Eddie that became a huge success story in America during the 70s.
However – and this is the brief version - when it came to light that Antar had been cooking the books for years and falsifying inventory, he went on the run to Israel. After he was extradited back to the States, he served a six-year prison sentence starting in 1999. Oh, and he had to pay $150 million in fines, which is ‘ouch’ in anyone’s language.
DeVito, who developed the movie along with screenwriter Peter Steinfeld, says that he was attracted to the story by the clear parallels to the current economic crisis, during which it seems a new case of serious fraud is uncovered every five minutes. But he’s also a bit of a biopic junkie, having directed Hoffa, and produced the likes of Man On The Moon and Erin Brockovich.
It looks like this will be the project that actually gets DeVito’s tiny little bottom back in a director’s chair – it had been announced back in August of last year that he was set to direct The True Confessions Of Charlotte Doyle, with Pierce Brosnan and Morgan Freeman, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside.