As 2023 comes to a close and we look ahead to the 2024 movie schedule, one movie many audiences are looking forward to is the return of Eddie Murphy to his most famous franchise with next summer’s Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Ahead of the fourth Beverly Hills Cop movie coming to Netflix, the beloved comedian got honest about making an action movie now that he’s in his sixties.
When Eddie Murphy first played Axel Foley in the 1984 classic, he had just come off four seasons of Saturday Night Live, which he was hired on for at the age of 19. With the release of Beverly Hills Cop 4 coming just a year shy of its 40th anniversary, Murphy had this to say about returning to the franchise:
It was a hard one. I did Axel Foley when I was in my 20s. I am not in my 20s anymore. It was an action movie. So it was a rough one. But we got through it.
While speaking to People, Eddie Murphy got honest about stepping back in the bomber jacket of Axel Foley and it sounds like doing all that action isn’t as easy as it used to be. Murphy also said this:
It’s a really physical movie and I had to do some physical stuff…. I like to be on the couch, I don’t like to be jumping over and shooting and running. And I had to do some jumping and shooting and running. And as a result… at the end of the movie, I had a knee brace and my back is messed up. But the movie is gonna be special.
Being an action star is no easy task, and as Eddie Murphy shared, doing all the physical work involved to be Axel Foley this time around wasn’t necessarily something for which his body was prepared. He was, of course, happy to do it and remains “really excited for people to see it,” but the shoot wasn’t necessarily a walk in the park for the actor.
As Murphy also shared, the fourth Beverly Hills Cop movie had been in the works for over a decade before it finally got off the ground, and the actor recalls reading five to six scripts before the movie got to the right place it needed to be. Jerry Bruckheimer, the movie’s producer, has previously teased that the movie will be funny for sure, but will also be “all about the heartstrings” as well. Longtime Beverly Hills Cop fans might want to keep tissues handy, it seems.
The first trailer for Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F came out earlier this month. Check it out:
The upcoming movie will also see the return of original cast members like Reinhold, Ashton, Paul Reiser and Bronson Pinchot, along with the addition of Kevin Bacon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Taylour Paige. The movie will be available to stream with a Netflix subscription next summer. Until then, you can watch Eddie Murphy in his new Christmas movie, Candy Cane Lane, which recently surpassed a huge milestone for Amazon Prime Video.