Why Eddie Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop TV Pilot Never Aired

A Beverly Hills Cop television show featuring Eddie Murphy returning as Axel Foley almost happened in 2013, but never saw the light of day. There’s been strong interest in resurrecting the long-dormant Beverly Hills Cop franchise for several decades now, with multiple revival attempts failing for several different reasons. This CBS-produced TV show was one such attempt and despite a pilot being shot, the series was passed on due to an issue stemming from Murphy himself.

The original Beverly Hills Cop hit theaters in 1984, and quickly became a smash hit with audiences. The film helped establish Murphy as one of the 1980’s definitive comedic powerhouses and led to a duo of sequels being released. The hilarious adventures of fish-out-of-water Detroit cop Axel Foley (Murphy) were recently confirmed to continue with the announcement that a Netflix-produced Beverly Hills Cop 4 is almost ready to begin filming after uses spent in development hell.

However, years before a fourth film was set in stone, CBS attempted to bring the franchise back through television. The series was planned to function like a reboot, but still be a sequel to the first three films. While the project definitely had the potential to do something both fresh and familiar with the story, CBS ultimately decided to abandon the series after Murphy made it clear he was not willing to appear as Axel in further episodes.

Much of the plot for the proposed Beverly Hills Cop show was set to follow Axel Foley’s son, played by Brandon T. Jackson. Eddie Murphy himself appeared in the pilot episode as Axel, but while the network – for obvious reasons – wanted him to make semi-regular appearances in future episodes, this detail was what killed any potential for the series to get a green light. In a 2019 interview, Murphy revealed his dissatisfaction with how frequently his character was set to appear.

“We did it, we shot a pilot for a TV show… The reason that didn’t get picked up was because [the studio] thought that I was going to be in this show, because [the lead] was my son: ‘And you’re going to pop in every now and then.’ I was like, ‘I ain’t popping in s***.’ ‘Well, we ain’t making this TV show.‘”

With Murphy unwilling to make more appearances in a Beverly Hills Cop show beyond the first episode, CBS canceled the series and shelved the pilot. What makes this revelation particularly disappointing is that the pilot was apparently solid. “The pilot was really good,” recalls Murphy. “It tested where they have these knobs [that you] turn if you like it. And whenever I came on the screen, Axel Foley would come on the screen, they turned it so they literally broke the knobs on the thing.” There’s no way to know whether the Beverly Hills Cop TV series would’ve been a hit with audiences, and with a fourth film now confirmed, the unmade show will forever remain a fascinating “what if” within the franchise. The pilot has never been released and there’s no actual footage available for it online, so fans of the franchise will have to take his work on its quality.

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