They are putting the band back together! Netflix has officially announced that the cast of Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley – Beverly Hills Cop 4, to you and me – will include Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Paul Reiser and Bronson Pinchot.
Reinhold and Ashton return Detective Billy Rosewood and Sgt. Taggart. Ashton was not in the third movie, with his character having been written as retired. Reiser returns as Foley’s Detroit cop partner Jeffrey Friedman, with Pinchot as a conceited, snobby former art gallery worker.
The announcement was made after spy pictures of the set showed Reinhold and Ashton present for filming and Reiser being spotted around the production.
Mark Molloy is directing off a script by Will Beall. Jerry Bruckheimer and Chad Oman are producing.
The first two movies are well-regarded. We try to pretend the third movie doesn’t even exist. All three movies grossed a combined $616.2 million worldwide.
It’s hard to believe that Sylvester Stallone was originally cast as Axel Foley. The actor himself had given the whole script a dramatic rewrite and it was now set as a straight action movie rather than the action comedy we came to experience.
The character of Billy Rosewood was called “Siddons” and was killed off half-way through the script during one of the action scenes. Stallone renamed the lead character to Axel Cobretti, with the character Jenny Summers playing his love interest.
Stallone has said that the script he wrote for Beverly Hills Cop included so much action and violence that it would would have:
“…looked like the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan on the beaches of Normandy. Believe it or not, the finale was me in a stolen Lamborghini playing chicken with an oncoming freight train being driven by the ultra-slimy bad guy.”
Stallone’s ideas were deemed too expensive and this disagreement led to him departing the role two weeks before filming started.
The rest is history. The movie shot Murphy to international stardom, won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture and was nominated for both the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1985.
Stallone would later use the bulk of his script ideas as the basis for the 1986 film Cobra, then blend them with ideas from the novel Fair Game by Paula Gosling.
In the original movies, the Beverly Hills region of Los Angeles was used as an example of unbelievable wealth and glamor. It remains exclusive today, even with the new reality of Los Angeles developing around it. What will drive Axel to return to LA from Detroit will be revealed in due course.
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