It’s been 40 years since the first Beverly Hills Cop movie opened in theaters. And if you aren’t old enough to remember it, it’s hard to describe just what a big movie it was. It was one of the highest-grossing movies of 1984, an incredible year at the box office, and it solidified Eddie Murphy as a bankable movie star, something that not everybody was sure Murphy could be. Now we’re getting close to the Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F release date, and it sounds like for fans of the original, it was at least a fun movie to make.
Mark Molloy, the director of the new Beverly Hills Cop told EW he used to watch the original movie over and over again on VHS as a kid, and thus the movie was quite engrained in his memory. So for him, getting the Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F cast of Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, and John Ashton together again, specifically, in a car, was a big moment. He explained…
I always had that image of those three guys on a stakeout in the car together, it was just imprinted in my brain. And then I remember sitting with the three of them in that car, and I actually happened to look around at the crew filming it. I just saw on everyone’s faces, like, Oh man, this is exactly where we want to be right now.
While I’m not sure exactly how old Mark Molloy is, he must be about my age because I could have said the exact same thing about the first Beverly Hills Cop. I also watched it endlessly on VHS, when I was much younger than I probably should have been, and the image of the three actors in that car is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the movie. I still can’t believe Sylvester Stallone could have starred in Beverly Hills Cop. It’s impossible to image this movie being anything else than what it became.
I can’t even imagine how cool it was to see this moment live on set, where the three cops are back in similar positions, recreating the iconic shot. It was amazing enough just seeing it in the Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F trailer.
Hopefully, this is exactly what this franchise needs, a director who has a passion for the original movie, and so clearly wants to make something that lives up to that film. It’s no secret that neither of the previous Beverly Hills Cop sequels lived up to the original, so the new movie is going to have some work ahead of it.
Fans will certainly be hoping that Axel F is a great Beverly Hills Cop movie, even if we had to wait 40 years to get another one. While Murphy admits doing a Beverly Hills Cop sequel at his age was hard, but hopefully it was worth it.