mobster who created Rex Crater to be his public face. Development Neil Cuthbert's script had been in development with producer Martin Bregman since at least 1983 under the shorter title Pluto Nash. Directors Rick Rosenthal and Peter Faiman were attached to the project at different times. Various stars including Harrison Ford were rumored to have considered doing the film. Eddie Murphy became attached to the film while it was in development at Castle Rock Entertainment. The company, which had previously worked with director Ron Underwood on City Slickers, sent Underwood the script. Underwood signed on to the film after the release of his film Mighty Joe Young. Different writers were hired to revise the script over a period of several months, but Eddie Murphy "kept rejecting the scripts," according to Underwood. Murphy asked for a "straight" script, like one that would be written for Sylvester Stallone or Harrison Ford, and said that he would "bring the comedy." Underwood delivered this to Murphy but believed that the script still had "problems" and hired another writer to continue to work on it during production. Production Underwood was dissatisfied with the results of the film as he was shooting it. "I knew we didn't have the kind of wit and the fun that I would want...I felt that it was not really working fully...But it wasn't very obvious how to correct it." He praised the talents of the cast and crew and said that he enjoyed working with Murphy, but said that Murphy "wasn't feeling that funny, I don't think." The result was that Underwood was on the production for four years. A review of a version of the film (with no special effects) that was published on Ain't It Cool News in January 2001 did not help matters, as Castle Rock became spooked and commissioned two weeks of reshoots in Los Angeles that pushed the film's budget to $100 million and miss a release date intended to be in April 2001. Reception Critical response The Adventures of Pluto Nash was critically panned. Rotten Tomatoes ranked the film 79th in the 100 worst 2000s decade movies list, with a rating of 5% based on 91 reviews. The critical consensus states, "The Adventures of Pluto Nash is neither adventurous nor funny, and Eddie Murphy is on autopilot in this notorious box office bomb." On Metacritic, it holds a 12 out of 100 based on