Ever since the first real talk began to surface around 2008, Eddie Murphy and Paramount have been struggling to make a new outing for the Beverly Hills Cop franchise. It’s been through the hands of a few writers, and director Brett Ratner (who just worked with Murphy on Tower Heist) has been attached for a while. But now Murphy says it won’t happen, at least cinematically, but that he’s now switching his focus to getting a TV version on the air.
Talking to Rolling Stone, Murphy admits that the fourth film is now looking permanently stuck in limbo. “They're not doing it," he tells the magazine. "What I'm trying to do now is produce a TV show starring Axel Foley's son, and Axel is the chief of police now in Detroit. I'd do the pilot, show up here and there. None of the movie scripts were right; it was trying to force the premise. If you have to force something, you shouldn't be doing it. It was always a rehash of the old thing. It was always wrong."
While there’s no guarantee a series take on the concept would be right, it’s an intriguing idea.
Murphy also has interesting things to say about his future on film, and specifically why he’s not going to be doing more family-friendly fare: “I don't have any interest in that right now," he says. "There's really no blueprint, but I'm trying to do some edgy stuff. And I only want to do what I really want to do, otherwise I'm content to sit here and play my guitar all day. I always tell people now that I'm a semiretired gentleman of leisure, and occasionally I'll go do some work to break the boredom up."
What he will be doing, however, is presenting the Oscars and appearing in Tower Heist, which is out on November 2. And he’s still got one more family film, the long-delayed A Thousand Words, which will arrive next April.
So: disappointed there won't be another Cop? Relieved? And do you think the TV show is the way to go? Sound off!