How Eddie Murphy's 'Beverly Hills Cop' changed Hollywood

Record ID: 1827020

  • Title: How Eddie Murphy's 'Beverly Hills Cop' changed Hollywood
  • Date: 1st July 2024
  • Summary: BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (JUNE 21, 2024) (Reuters) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTOR, KEVIN BACON, SAYING:- ON EDDIE MURPHY’S TALENT “There’s certain actors and I’ve worked with great actors who do exactly this thing where they’re (in) a very, very preparative state and they wait for that camera to say action and then they’re there, or staying in the character or
  • Embargoed: 15th July 2024 10:56
  • Keywords: Action Comedy Beverly Hills Cop Eddie Murphy Jerry Bruckheimer Kevin Bacon
  • Location: BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES; UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS
  • City: BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES; UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS
  • Country: US
  • Topics: Arts/Culture/Entertainment,Film,North America
  • Reuters ID: LVA008449327062024RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: CONTAINS PROFANITY THROUGHOUT FILM TRAILERS AND CLIPS
    THIS IS A COMPANION PIECE TO 4496-FILM-BEVERLY HILLS COP
    Eddie Murphy is returning to the franchise that made him a Hollywood leading man with 'Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley', which begins streaming on Netflix on July 3.
    According to Murphy, the original film, from 1984, broke new ground with filmmaking.
    “’Beverly Hills Cop’ is the first of what would become a genre – the action comedy," Murphy told Reuters.
    He added "Before ‘Beverly Hills Cop’, there was no action comedy, there was hard-ass cops like Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson and you had comedies and ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ was the first one to mix those, to mix that, so after ‘Beverly Hills Cop’, you have ‘Die Hard’, ‘Lethal Weapon’ and the cops start saying ‘Hasta la vista, baby’ and trying to be funny. ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ was the first one to do that.”
    Hollywood lore says that it was originally supposed to be Sylvester Stallone starring as the risk-taking cop Axel Foley, and Murphy joined after Stallone quit the project
    But according to producer Jerry Bruckheimer, there's more to the story.
    “We gave the script originally to Eddie and he wanted to do it," Bruckheimer told Reuters, adding "Then they (Paramount Pictures) said ‘Oh well, we’ve got to pay Stallone this money, let’s make him, let’s have him do this movie and he loved it too but he rewrote the script and made it more action than comedy and Paramount said it got too expensive so it came back to us. ‘Who do you want to be in the movie?’ We said Eddie. So we went out to New Jersey and sat in his kitchen and tried to convince him to do this movie.”
    It's now been 30 years since the last in the franchise, 'Beverly Hills Cop III', and 40 years since the original.
    Murphy said on the difficulties of returning to the franchise, "What was more difficult was all the physical stuff because, you know, I’m in my 60s now and I did the first one 21-years old, so you can imagine the differences, you know. When I first did ‘Beverly Hills Cop’, I got no kids, I can just drink legally, and now I’m 10 kids and I’m a grandpa and I can drink all night, if I like.”
    For Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Foley's new sidekick Bobby, starring in a 'Beverly Hills Cop' movie was a dream come true. His late brother Dan, who died in 2010, was a huge Eddie Murphy fan.
    "When your older sibling likes something, it becomes cool in a new and different and almost larger-than-life way and that was Eddie Murphy for me when I was a kid," Gordon-Levitt said.
    He added "I mean like I can’t really be in the same room as Eddie without feeling like my brother’s kind of there and that’s a great feeling.”
    In 'Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley', Foley discovers his estranged daughter Jane (Taylour Paige), a public defender, is in danger.
    Murphy said "That’s what the movie is about, their relationship and that’s why he’s out in Beverly Hills because his daughter is in danger. Once we added that to it, everything just fell into place. That’s the glue that holds the whole movie together.”
    (Production: Rollo Ross)
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