Madea is playing Alex Cross

Full disclosure: I am a MASSIVE Alex Cross fan.

Alex Cross biography

I've pretty much read all the Cross books (with the exception of the most recent couple) and have been avidly following the series pretty much since Morgan Freeman NAILED it with Kiss the Girls back in the day (my personal favorite of the series anyhoo):

However, Morgan Freeman was not entirely the perfect choice for Alex Cross.

Cross is most often described as a Denzel Washington look-alike - which I find fascinatingly ODD since Denzel never really ages and would've been PHENOMENAL in the role 20, 10, or even 5 years ago, not to mention, oh I don't know - how about NOW.

Needless to say, Hollywood wanted to "reboot" the Cross series and while Morgan Freeman is the effing MAN, he's definitely too old for the character now...and this is one of the rare cases where a reboot and a recasting is extremely welcome.

When the most recent Alex Cross project started, the production team first sought Idris Elba:

You know the man, you've seen him in Thor, Takers, the Losers, the Office, and the Wire. He's an astoundingly good actor who's done EVERYTHING. He's well suited for action and drama and he just looks perfect for Alex Cross.

ME WAS UBER DUPER SUPER EXCITED!!!

And then something happened. I suspect that either he asked too much for a salary or his massive schedule conflicted with the studio's shoot date. Either way, Elba was out.

Enter Tyler Perry...

No, you read that right.

Look, I'm absolutely not a Tyler Perry hater. He has his thing, his schtick, and he's been extremely successful with it. Good on him. It's totally NOT my thing but whatever. Now he's trying to branch out.

STILL, Madea himself was tapped to star as Detective and Forensic Psychologist Alex Cross. Family man, widow, boxer, piano player, lover of multiple women, and driver of a badass Porsche got relegated to Tyler Perry.

But here's the thing...they balked at Michael Keaton when he was hired to play Batman. We all know how that went. I'm of course willing to give this a chance.

Especially after some of these shots:

This is Matthew Fox!!! He's the bad guy in the flick...I know! Right!?

All of this makes me hopeful...but yet I can't help but feel just a tad bit apprehensive. The studio had an A+++++ ready to go on their hands (granted, in terms of casting) and now they have a pretty big question mark. So I guess we'll just wait and see.

Furthermore (full disclosure again), upon doing research for this article I came across an interesting interview which made me see that Perry is taking this role very seriously...so it'll probably turn out all right: