Eddie Murphy has explained why Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, the fourth film in the
franchise took 30 years to materialize.
The upcoming film sees Murphy reprise his role as the iconic wise-cracking police
officer, with his latest adventure seeing him return to Los Angeles as he teams up
with his estranged daughter, Jane (Taylour Paige), to solve a vast conspiracy.
According to Digital Spy, the upcoming film endured an elongated production
cycle after initially being conceived in the immediate aftermath of 1994’s Beverly
Hills Cop III, with Murphy explaining to ScreenRant why the latest installment
took so long to get off the ground.
“The reason why the movie didn’t come together for years and years and years is
because, in all the scripts that I read, there was no evolution,” he began. “It was
just, ‘Axel’s coming back now, and he’s on a new mission.’ It was like, ‘Okay, now
this has happened.’
“It was just the generic things. ‘This happens, and that happens, then this happens,
and that happens.’ And nothing worked. Then once they added the element where
Axel was married and he’s not with his wife anymore, and they have a child and
he’s estranged from his child, and he’s still in this job, and all of his contemporaries
are leaving…
“All he’s got is his job, and he’s got this horrible relationship. And the reason Axel’s
back in Beverly Hills on the surface is cops and robbers, but behind the scenes, it’s
really to reconcile with his daughter and all that stuff. Once we added that element,
then we had a movie.”
Murphy isn’t the only returning cast member for the feature, with Judge Reinhold,
John Ashton, Paul Reiser, and Bronson Pinchot all reprising their roles; the new cast
members, in addition to Paige, include Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Kevin Bacon.
