‘Beverly Hills Cop 4’ Will Start Shooting After ‘Coming To America 2’, According To Eddie Murphy
Eddie Murphyis back. He’s earning rave reviews for his work in the crowd-pleasingDolemite Is My Name, and he’s already hard at work on the long-awaitedComing To America 2. But that’s not the only classic film he’s returning to. According to Murphy,Beverly Hills Cop 4is going to ramp up production as soon asComing To America 2is done. But do audiences want more Axel Foley?
Murphy dropped theBeverly Hills Cop 4news to Collider,saying:
“Yeah that’s what we’re doing afterComing to America 2. We’re doingBeverly Hills Copand then the plan is to get back on stage and do standup. That’s what I’ll be doing mostly is standup. These movies andSaturday Night Liveit’s kind of like…I’m looking at it as a bookend. If I decided I wanted to stay on the couch forever, I ended it on a funny note.”
Beverly Hills Cop 4has been knocking around since the mid-90s, when it was first announced with Murphy producing. But afterBeverly Hills Cop 3in 1994, the project evaporated. In 2006, producer Jerry Bruckheimer revealed he planned to get the film off the ground after all, but then went on to sell the project to producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. By then there was already a script in place, and by 2008, Brett Ratner was hired to direct. But that version of the movie also failed to materialize. In 2011, Murphy revealed a TV spin-off was in the works. The show would focus on the son of his character, Axel Foley, with Axel now serving as the chief of police. The project was set-up at CBS, but the network decided to pass on it. Since then, a potentialBeverly Hills Cop 4has gone through fits and starts. But now, with Murphy’s career back on track, it looks like it might finally happen.
Released in 1984, the originalBeverly Hills Copwas supposed to star Sylvester Stallone. But Stallone didn’t like the comedy in the script and decided to remove it and turn the project into a straightforward action movie. When that didn’t work out, Stallone walked, and turned the serious script into the gloriously trashy action filmCobra.
Murphy, who was still relatively new to his film career at the time, took over the lead role inBeverly Hills Cop, and the film, along with48 HoursandTrading Places, helped turn him into an international movie star. Murphy played Axel Foley, a Detroit cop who heads to posh Beverly Hills during the course of a murder investigation. It was followed byBeverly Hills Cop 2in 1987, andBeverly Hills Cop 3in 1994.
I honestly don’t know what else theBeverly Hills Copfranchise can offer at this point, but after seeingDolemite Is My Name, I’m just happy to have Murphy back in adult-oriented films again.
