Trading Places Trading Places Trading Places is a 1983 American comedy film directed by John Landis and starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy. It tells the story of an upper-class commodities broker and a homeless street hustler whose lives cross paths when they are unknowingly made part of an elaborate bet. Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, Denholm Elliott, and Jamie Lee Curtis also star. The storyline is often called a modern take on Mark Twain's classic 19th-century novel "The Prince and the Pauper". The film was written by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod and was produced by Aaron Russo. It was released to
Trading Places in direct contrast to his own—often draws comparisons to Mark Twain's novel "The Prince and the Pauper". First published in 1881, the novel follows the lives of a prince and a beggar—both of them of adolescent age—who use their uncanny resemblance to each other as a premise to switch places temporarily; the prince takes on a life of poverty and misery while the pauper enjoys the lavish luxuries of a royal life. Parallels have also been drawn between "Trading Places" and Mozart's 18th century comic opera "The Marriage of Figaro" in which a servant (Figaro) foils the plans of his