Eddie Murphy Says He Won’t Do Beverly Hills Cop 4 Until The Script’s Right

Having taken an extended sabbatical from acting because he felt as though he was making too many sh*tty movies, which are his words and not ours, the Eddie Murphy comeback looks like it could be on the cards. After winning rave reviews for his performance in Netflix’s Dolemite Is My Name, landing himself a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, long-awaited sequel Coming 2 America has proven to be a massive success.

Critics haven’t been overwhelmingly positive, and it sits on a bang average Rotten Tomatoes score of 50%, but Amazon are touting it as the biggest streaming debut of the COVID-19 era, which is no mean feat when the highest profile originals across every major platform have been drawing in record numbers. The 59 year-old still hasn’t officially settled on his next project yet, but let’s not forget that Beverly Hills Cop 4 is in the works at Netflix.

The fourth installment in the franchise has been stuck in development hell for close to a quarter of a century, with Bad Boys for Life directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah having first signed on to tackle the return of Axel Foley in the summer of 2016, and they’re still set to reinvent the popular action series. In a new interview, Murphy was asked about the status of Beverly Hills Cop 4, and he admitted that the script is key to making it work.

“They’ve been trying to make another Beverly Hills Cop for fifteen years now. Right now, Netflix has it, and they’re trying to develop a script. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing next. But, I’m not doing nothing until the script is right.”

Given that Netflix must have paid a pretty penny to acquire the rights from Paramount and retained the directors of a recent smash hit blockbuster who’ve seen their stock increase dramatically since Bad Boys for Life was released, the streaming service is clearly high on Beverly Hills Cop 4, they just need a script that’s good enough to convince the leading man.