Quentin Tarantino Once Approached Eddie Murphy With a ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ Sequel Idea: ‘Quentin Is Insane’
Quentin Tarantino has floated around ideas for franchises like James Bond and Star Trek. It turns out, according to Eddie Murphy himself, he also might have wanted in on Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop series.
Eddie Murphy on working with Quentin Tarantino
Murphy had been mulling over the possibility of a Beverly Hills Cop sequel for years. The series’ last film, 1994’s Beverly Hills Cop III, was one that many felt wasn’t the franchise at its best. Murphy agreed, which gave the comedian extra motivation to see a proper sequel to the third movie.
“I don’t think it’s gonna happen in March, but it is gonna be in Detroit. And before it happens, they’ve got to get that script right. That movie has to be right,” he once said in an interview with the Playboy (via AV Club). “The third Beverly Hills Cop was garbage. Those movies, when I travel overseas, people say [in a foreign accent] ‘Hey, Beverly Hills Cop! Axel Foley!’ They call me that s***. All the movies I’ve done, and they call me that. If we do that movie, it has to be right.”
One person who seemed to have a new way of approaching Beverly Hills Cop was Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino apparently told Murphy his idea for the movie while writing Murphy a part in Inglourious Basterds.
“There’s been talk. Nothing solid yet. Quentin is insane but good insane. He came to me with an idea for another Cop, and we’ve been talking about that. If it comes off, great – he’s one crazy guy worth working with,” he said.
How Eddie Murphy was convinced to do ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley’
A fourth Beverly Hills Cop has recently wrapped, and is scheduled to release sometime on Netflix titled Axel Foley. One of the reasons the sequel took so long to develop was Murphy’s disappointment in ideas and scripts written for the movie. But producer Jerry Bruckheimer persuaded Murphy to hop on board the sequel. Bruckheimer was a producer responsible for many hit films, including Beverly Hills Cop.
“When he got involved, and he started developing the script, and he knew what Beverly Hills Cop was supposed to be,” Murphy once told Collider. “When he got back involved, that’s when it all started to come together. Because we tried for years and years, maybe 10, 12 years, and I must have read five or six different scripts, and it was never right. The studio was like, ‘Let’s go. Here it is.’ It was like, ‘It’s just not it.’ Jerry Bruckheimer got back in there, and he knows his s***, and he put it together.”
Murphy also mentioned that Bruckheimer’s association with two other recent big blockbusters inspired further confidence in Axel Foley.
“He did [Top Gun: Maverick] just last year, and Bad Boys is Jerry Bruckheimer. So we have that same brain behind Beverly Hills Cop, and he put all the pieces in place that were required for us to make a great movie. And I’m excited for people to see it,” he said.
What Eddie Murphy thought of the ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ TV series
Before Axel Foley, a Beverly Hills Cop television series was also being developed. But Murphy’s opinion on the television series didn’t seem much higher than his opinion on Cop III. Murphy was originally supposed to cameo in the series, but soon was wanted as a recurring character on the show. But Murphy declined the latter, and wasn’t too thrilled with plans executives had for him.
“I remember this executive, when we were doing some promo stuff; he came in and said ‘Hey, can you do ‘the laugh’ and then say ‘I’m back?’ I said, ‘That’s a horrible idea. They’ll think I’ve lost my mind,’” he said.
The CBS network refused to pick up the show.
