Netflix Teases ‘Beverly Hills Cop 4’ With New Photo Of Eddie Murphy Returning As Axel Foley

By Samantha Nungesser Twitter @samjnungesser
Published Nov. 22, 2023, 10:01 a.m. ET

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Eddie Murphy

Eddie Murphy is officially back as Axel Foley in yet another Beverly Hills Cop flick, which will drop on Netflix at some point next year.

The streaming platform posted a teaser photo from the upcoming action-comedy — titled Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley. It shows Murphy in his character’s signature Detroit Lions jacket with his hands up in the air as he’s seemingly being surrounded by police.

“He’s back. Axel Foley returns in 2024!” Netflix captioned the post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

While there is no official release date just yet, Murphy is slated to reunite with OG Beverly Hills Cop stars Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Paul Reiser and Bronson Pinchot. Kevin Bacon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Taylour Paige will also star in the franchise’s fourth installment, per Entertainment Weekly.

The movie is set to follow Foley’s criminal defense attorney daughter, played by Paige, who gets him involved in a California-based case, per Esquire. However, he quickly starts causing problems for the LAPD’s special units officer, played by Bacon.

According to Murphy, filming Beverly Hills Cop 4 in his 60s was much different than shooting the original in his 20s.

“It was a hard one. I did Axel Foley when I was in my 20s. I am not in my 20s anymore,” he told People in a recent interview. “It was an action movie. So it was a rough one. But we got through it.”

The original Beverly Hills Cop, which came out in 1984, follows a young Detroit Police Department detective named Axel Foley (Murphy), who ventures out to Beverly Hills to solve the murder of his best friend. The Golden Globe-nominated film — which catapulted Murphy into stardom — ultimately became the highest-grossing movie released in the U.S. that year.

Murphy later appeared in two sequels: Beverly Hills Cop II in 1987 and Beverly Hills Cop III in 1994. While talks of a fourth film had been going on for more than a decade, the ball didn’t get rolling until original producer Jerry Bruckheimer joined the project.

“When he got involved and he started developing the script, and he knew what Beverly Hills Cop is supposed to be, when he got back involved, that’s when it all started to come together,” Murphy told Collider. “We tried for years and years — maybe 10, 12 years — and I must’ve read five or six different scripts and it was never right.”

He added, “Jerry Bruckheimer got back in there and he knows his shit and he put it together … He put all the pieces in place for us to make a great movie and I’m excited for people to see it.”