After more than two decades of delays, Beverly Hills Cop 4 is finally on its way. This time, however, it won’t be a theatrical release. The rights to the film have been acquired by Netflix, and the film will release on the OTT platform. Lorenzo di Bonaventura was announced as the new producer of Beverly Hills Cop 4 in July 2006, taking over from Jerry Bruckheimer. Brett Ratner was announced as the director. However, those plans were dropped in 2011, with focus shifted on a television series, with Eddie Murphy serving as producer. The film has seen its fair share of delays and crew changes, but after Paramount Pictures sold the rights of the film to Netflix, it seems like the film has finally hit the ground running.
Beverly Hills Cop 4- What we know so far
After the television series, Paramount resumed plans for Beverly Hills Cop 4, with Bruckheimer set to return as producer and Brett Ratner rehired as director. Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec were hired to write a script. A release date of March 25, 2016 was also finalized. But the film got shelved again due to issues with the script. Eddie Murphy, who plays the role of Axel Foley, said this about the shelved script:
“I’m not doing a shitty movie just to make some paper. The shit got to be right.”
In June 2016, director-duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah were hired as the replacement to Brett Ratner. In September 2018, they expressed their interest to have Tom Hardy or Channing Tatum in supoorting roles for Beverly Hills Cop 4.
In October 2019, Eddie Murphy said that he will begin working on Beverly Hills Cop 4 after he finishes filming Coming 2 America. As for a script, co-director Adil El Arbi said that they have a screenwriter and that there is a first draft of the script being worked on.
With all the positive updates around Beverly Hills Cop 4, we can expect the film to release on Netflix by the end of 2021, or latest by 2022.