It Only Took One Person To Convince Eddie Murphy To Do Beverly Hills Cop IV
It's hard to overstate just how big of a deal Eddie Murphy was in the 1980s. Apart from his stand-up comedy and Saturday Night Live success, many of the biggest Murphy movies of all time hail from that era, from "Coming 2 America" to "48 Hours" and "Trading Places."
And then there is the "Beverly Hills Cop" series. No matter how many cool late-career roles and "Shrek" movies Murphy adds to his resume, the star will likely always be associated with mouthy supercop Axel Foley. In fact, if you've ever seen a "Beverly Hills Cop" film, there's a chance that the instantly recognizable theme song is playing in your head as you read this.
Murphy made two "Beverly Hills Cop" movies in the 1980s, and Detective Foley had his third adventure in 1994. However, after that, we've had a three-decade Foley drought, as the fourth movie in the series — "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley" — will premiere on Netflix at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future. What caused Murphy to revisit his arguably best-known live action role after so many years? Turns out, all it took was one person to bring him back as Axel Foley.
The news of Jerry Bruckheimer's involvement was enough for Murphy
It certainly wasn't easy to get Murphy back on "Beverly Hills Cop" track. In a new interview with Collider, the star noted that he read a whole bunch of scripts and decided against all of them. However, at the end of the day, all it took was one man to get him back on board. Of course, this wasn't just any person. "Jerry Bruckheimer, the original producer. When he got involved, and he started developing the script, and he knew what Beverly Hills Cop was supposed to be. When he got back involved, that's when it all started to come together," Murphy revealed.
Bruckheimer produced the first two installments in the film series, but wasn't involved in "Beverly Hills Cop 3," where production duties were handled by Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme. Evidently, Murphy doesn't think of this particular sequel too fondly, seeing as it's a certifiable turkey that stands at a Tomatometer score of just 11 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Knowing this, it's not awfully surprising that the actor recognized Bruckheimer as the missing piece of the puzzle, and made the call to make the movie when he heard of the producer's involvement.