Eddie Murphy is back with a badge for the fourth franchise installment of his beloved series, with “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.”
The upcoming Netflix film, which teased a first look earlier this year, marks Murphy’s long-rumored reprisal the iconic character Detective Axel Foley. The ’80s-era franchise first began with Foley as a Detroit detective turned temporary L.A. police officer for an uncover mission. Now, after having worked in L.A. sporadically for decades, Foley teams up with his estranged daughter Jane (Taylour Paige) to take down yet another conspiracy.
Along the way, Foley lands a new partner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and police captain (Kevin Bacon), but his old confidantes, including Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton), are still in the mix. Also returning? Franchise co-stars Paul Reiser and Bronson Pinchot.
“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” is directed by Mark Molloy from a script by Will Beall, Tom Gormican, and Kevin Etten. The film is based on characters created by Danilo Bach and Daniel Petrie, Jr. and a story by Beall. Jerry Bruckheimer produces “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” along with lead star Murphy and Chad Oman. Charisse Hewitt-Webster, Ray Angelic, and Lorenzo Di Bonaventura serve as executive producers, with Melissa Reid as a co-producer for Jerry Bruckheimer Films. This fourth film was announced in 2022.
Before “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” got off the ground, there was another sequel installment idea brewing. During an episode of the “50 MPH” podcast, which offers a comprehensive oral history of “Speed,” former Paramount vice president of production Don Granger revealed that stalled negotiations for “Speed” led him to pitch the screenplay as a “Beverly Hills Cop III” script as a “last-ditch effort” to get the screenplay made.
“I got about 15 minutes of traction before it was dismissed, because that was back when the mandate was to find a ‘Beverly Hill Cop III.’ So I was like, ‘Let’s put Axel Foley on the bus.’ It was a Hail Mary, man,” Granger said. “I might maintain it was a better movie, it would have been a better movie than ultimately what we got for ‘Beverly Hills Cop III,’ but that was my final Hail Mary.”
“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” star Gordon-Levitt told Empire that this feature actually goes off-script quite a bit, thanks to Murphy improvising on set.
“On that first day, waiting for the rig to reposition, we started talking about the song ‘Let the Good Times Roll’. The original version, the Harry Nilsson cover, and then other songs with that phrase in, by Sam Cooke and Jimi Hendrix,” Gordon-Levitt recalled of working with Murphy. “Eddie’s kind of a nerd about those things, as am I. … I also get my licks in. I wouldn’t be living up to this crazy opportunity if I wasn’t going to have a few myself. We got to do some really fun stuff.”
“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” starts streaming July 3 on Netflix. Check out the film’s first trailer below.
