2024 PREVIEW
14 Axel’s Back
AND HE’S BRINGING THE 1980S WITH HIM
BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL FOLEY
OUT TBC
THE HEAT IS on. But it’s taken a whole lot of matchsticks to get the flame going. Talk of a fourth assignment for Eddie Murphy’s most iconic character — the big-laughing, smart-shooting, banana-weaponising police officer Axel Foley — began soon after the release of Beverly Hills Cop III in 1994. But for various reasons (not least the underperformance of that movie, which may feature George Lucas’ greatest ever cameo as Disappointed Man, waiting for his turn on a theme-park ride, but otherwise led to a lot of Disappointed Fans), over the next three decades, it just wouldn’t come together. A Brett Ratner movie. A CBS TV pilot. An iteration that might have teamed Murphy with Tom Hardy. All spluttered out.