The heat is back on! Eddie Murphy is doing a fourth BEVERLY HILLS COP movie!

There are very few people, post-puberty, who can look at Eddie Murphy’s filmography over the last decade or so and not visibly cringe. While he was once one of the edgiest and funniest men in Hollywood, Murphy mostly became a family-friendly flop machine where his films’ box office failures were often the inspiration for jokes far funnier than the films’ actual punchlines.

Many fans have been wishing Murphy would go back to what he did best – fast talking R-rated action romps – and it looks like they’re getting their wish as he has signed on to make Beverly Hills Cop 4!  What’s weird about this though, is that it’s happening because somebody didn’t want to make more Beverly Hills Cop.

So remember that new Beverly Hills Cop TV series that The Shield creator Shawn Ryan was putting together? That series would have seen Brandon T. Jackson starring as Aaron Foley, the police officer son of Murphy’s Axel Foley who has moved up the ranks from wise cracking detective to wise cracking Police Commissioner since we last saw him. Murphy was set to reprise the role in a series of occasional cameos, including in the show’s pilot episode directed by Barry Sonnenfeld for CBS.

However, CBS has since decided to not pick up the show for a full season deal, despite some really great test audience reactions. Sources say though that those test reactions were largely for Murphy’s resurrection of arguably his most famous character. According to Deadline this has prompted Paramount, who owns the rights to the franchise and is never one to turn down an opportunity to make some moola, to get the ball rolling on a fourth Beverly Hills Cop movie.

They’ve tapped Josh Applebaum and Andre Nemec, who recently found great success with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, to pen a script for a fourth feature film. There’s no word on what direction this script will take; whether Murphy’s Foley will be the older police commissioner from the now scuppered TV series, or have it be something else entirely (which I’m kind of hoping for).

All I know is that soon there’ll be a time when I can go to the cinema and hear the Beverly Hills Cop theme song, and it won’t just be because I’ve arrived too early and Nu Metro are playing that Axel F song before they start the trailers again. And this makes me happy!

Last Updated: July 30, 2013