The only idea worse than Beverly Hills Cop 4 is any Brett Ratner movie, but small victories, at least they’ve been combined into just one movie. Paramount today set the project for a March 25th, 2016 release, allowing Brett Ratner and Eddie Murphy almost two years to recapture the magic that made Tower Heist such a gold-plated dog turd. However, keep in mind that we’ve been talking about Beverly Hills Cop 4 since 2008 (the third one came out in 1994) so I wouldn’t start pre-ordering tickets just yet.
The new film has the pre-summer weekend to itself for now. Jerry Bruckheimer is back as producer, and Brett Ratner is directing the pic, which will see Murphy’s Foley returning to his Detroit roots. Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec, the scribes behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, are writing that script. [Deadline]
Brett Ratner directing with Jerry Bruckheimer producing – if ever there was an ironclad guarantee that a movie was going to be terrible, it’s that creative team. No word yet on whether the film project will follow the same formula of Axel Foley training his son that was the plot of the scrapped-at-the-last-minute BHC 4 TV show, but no one makes movies without a plan for an entire franchise anymore, so I wouldn’t bet against it. Maybe team up Murphy with Taylor Lautner or Kellen Lutz (execs love the idea of some Twilight twink pulling in the teen girl crowd), with a now-retired Judge Reinhold playing the kindly old proprietor of the orphanage where Lautner was raised? Rosewood’s Boys?
Also, as bad an idea as this is on every level, if they bring back Gabourey Sidibe and her Jamaican accent from Tower Heist as Axel Foley’s wisecracking sidekick, I’m all in. “Nah, mon, me no gwan been trown off by dem bumbaclot bah-nana in me tail pipe, BUH! BUH!”