According to Deadline and Mania, Tyler Perry has been tapped to play Alex Cross in a reboot of the movie adaptation of the James Patterson book “I, Alex Cross”, a role originally inhabited by Morgan Freeman.
The film reboot was originally scheduled to be a vehicle for Idris Elba, an actor who seems admittedly more along the lines of Freeman than Perry does. As Deadline stated, it is an unconventional choice to have Perry, who generally stars in his own films as Medea, in such a role as Alex Cross, but that is not to say that he will ultimately bomb. Frankly, as an actor, I don’t think we’ve fully seen all of Perry’s potential because he’s only limited himself to playing Medea and a few other characters in his films, and all of those characters are pretty basic in terms of range. In all of his films, the character he’s played that has had the most range is Terry in “Why Did I Get Married” and “Why Did I Get Married Too”.
This won’t be the first time Perry has starred in a film outside from his own realm; he was featured as Starfleet Academy board member Admiral Richard Barnett in the 2009 reboot of “Star Trek”.
The reboot of “I, Alex Cross” will be directed by Rob Cohen.
