Last we heard of BEVERLY HILLS COP 4, Eddie Murphy was pretty adamant about only going to work on a script that he approved of. This didn't stop Paramount Pictures from nailing down a date of March 25, 2016 for the release, however. Brett Ratner (HERCULES, RUSH HOUR) is still set to helm the picture but if a recent interview with Playboy is any indication, I don't expect we'll be seeing BEVERLY HILLS COP 4 in a year from now. You can check out the whole interview here, but suffice it to say that Eddie Murphy is working on a lot of other projects EXCEPT a return to Axel Foley.
Eddie Murphy regarding the BEVERLY HILLS COP 4 shoot that was going to happen in March:
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. 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 shit. All the movies I’ve done, and they call me that. If we do that movie, it has to be right. Not just thrown together to get a big check. I don’t need anymore of those.
Regarding the fate of the Beverly Hills Cop TV pilot:
I was gonna be in the pilot, and they thought I should be recurring. I’m not gonna do Beverly Hills Cop on TV. I remember when they tested it — they had this little knob that you turn if you like it or you don’t like it. So when Axel shows up in the pilot, some people turned the knob so much, they broke it. So the network decided “if he isn’t recurring, then this isn’t gonna happen.” So it didn’t happen.
It's ironic that Mr. Murphy decides to become more critical of scripts at this stage, but better late than never! Given that Axel Foley is his most popular character to date, he's right in not accepting any garbage that comes across his desk. I'd be rather curious to check out the pilot he took part of, but given that Paramount is willing to spend some big bucks to bring him back for a feature-film, I don't think we're going to see it anytime soon. Whatever the outcome, it couldn't be worse than PLUTO NASH.
BEVERLY HILLS COP 4 is still scheduled for a March 25, 2016 release.