A Beverly Hills Cop 4 movie isn’t looking too likely right now, but could a TV series be more successful? Eddie Murphy certainly thinks so…
As we mentioned yesterday, Beverly Hills Cop 4 isn’t likely to be happening in the near future, but there is another possibility for the fondly-remembered franchise: a second life on television.
Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine (and subsequently picked up by Coming Soon), Eddie Murphy revealed that he’s been attempting to produce a TV series based on the property, which would cover the exploits of Axel Foley’s son.
"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,” Murphy said. “I'd do the pilot, show up here and there."
As for why a Beverly Hills Cop 4 movie has never materialised, Murphy confirmed what many had already suspected: nobody could come up with a decent script. “It was always a rehash of the old thing,” the actor explained.
While a Beverly Hills Cop TV series makes sense from a financial perspective – the property is just sitting around doing nothing, after all – the reduction of Axel Foley to a cameo role will surely remove what was great about the original movie. In the 1984 original, Murphy was still on top comic form, and part of the reason the first film was so successful was because of his improvised dialogue.
And if various screenwriters have struggled to come up with a decent idea for a fourth movie, is there really enough mileage in the franchise to make a workable TV series out of it?
More on news on a potential son of Axel F TV series as we get it.
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