More Beverly Hills Cop IV Details Emerge


More Beverly Hills Cop IV Details Emerge

Posted by SexiVixxEN 295 days ago
Can someone perform a drive-by on this project while blasting Harold Faltermeyer instrumentals? We’ve already seen a 180-spin with Beverly Hills Cop IV, with poolguy Brett Ratner originally playing to the kiddies, then predictably back-pedaling and labeling the film “hard R, brah” followed by a tepid review of the script and its more serious “standard cop movie” tone (Judge Reinhold gets murdered etc).

Apparently screenwriters Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, who remain hot from adapting Wanted and 3:10 to Yuma, have been tinkering with their original draft. CineFools just interviewed Brandt, who clarifies that the BHC4 script is a reworking of their older, unrelated script entitled Dying Day. This reminds me of how a script entitled “Simon Says” was used, adequately if not definitively so, for Die Hard 3. Brandt had this to say about the project’s progress…

The studio called and the producers called and said hey we just got a new draft of Beverley Hills Cop 4 and the writers we keep hiring keep trying to write a comedy and we don’t want a comedy. …So what they said to us was they wanted to go back to that and Derek and I had written a script two years ago called Dying Day which was kind of a buddy cop thing set in LA with buddy FBI agents but it wasn’t jokey at all it was pretty hardcore everybody died in the end and it was the kind of movie/script that everybody who read it really liked but nobody was ever going to make it into a movie. Too dark. And they said they would like to turn Dying Day into Beverley Hills Cop 4.

These statements align with the script review Latino Review posted last year: it’s more 1997 Metro shoot ‘em up generica and less 1994 Beverly Hills Cop 3 summer FAIL. Brandt does seem to grasp the detective actioner roots of the franchise—noting that BHC was at one point a Sly Stallone vehicle—and I do think Eddie Murphy is totes capable of reprising Axel Foley’s FU witticisms and Detroit street smarts (speaking of which, save Detroit, Axel); playing Richard Pryor in Bill Condon’s biopic is a promising sign that he wants to be funny again.

But Brett Ratner, oh Ratner, does not possess the jumper cables, the patience, nor the ambition to dust the ’80s off the franchise while paying exquisite homage to what’s come before. He churns out blocks of mediocre that are easy to market and that exude no concept of history, cinematic or otherwise. Combined with a script that wasn’t written with an aged Axel Foley or the legacy in mind—unlike Stupnitsky and Eisenberg’s Ghostbusters 3—it sounds as souless as the last sequel. But, you know, darker, man. Why not just have John Singleton remake it with Nick Cannon?
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Comments


  • RemiLogan
    Stick a fork in it! And I have to agree with the previous poster WHOLEHEARTEDLY, fourth sequels don't tend to work out, and I am personally sick of Eddie Murphy. Norbit was absolutely horrible!! (He was decent in Dreamgirls). If he was pissed at the Academy for not giving him an Oscar, he'll guarantee he won't get one this time around if he does BHC IV
    posted by RemiLogan 294 days ago
  • dnjsbd1967
    How about just forget the whole thing entirely?Leave the trilogy as is.History shows that 4th installments of alot of franchises don't do well(eg.Indianna Jones,Lethal Weapon,Superman 4,Batman & Robin,you get the idea).Besides,isn't everybody getting a little sick of some of the crap Eddie Murphy's been coming out with?I guess when all else fails,bring back something that worked a long time ago,but in all likelihood,no one will really give a rats ass about.
    posted by dnjsbd1967 295 days ago