Why Eddie Murphy's Beverly Hills Cop Series Never Made It To TV

Before the cameras began rolling on "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley," the celebrated comedy franchise had struggled to find a way to continue its story. Attempts to get a fourth "Beverly Hills Cop" film off the ground spanned decades and several scripts, with it only materializing only recently thanks to Netflix. While we will eventually see Eddie Murphy's classic character return to the screen, we can't up but think about all the other variations of how his story could continue.

One of these variations involved him handing over the reins to his son, Aaron. This was the premise of a proposed television show to air on CBS, which received a pilot order in 2013. Unfortunately, while a pilot was shot, "Beverly Hills Cop" never materialized as a show. However, it might not be for the reason you expected. Take it from Murphy himself, who spoke about it with IndieWire back in 2019.

"We shot a pilot for a TV show for 'Beverly Hills Cop 3,'" he said. "I was in the pilot, but they wanted me to be there every week."

It's important to understand that Axel Foley was never meant to be the main attraction of the series. The star was Aaron Foley (Brandon T. Jackson), whose main character arc was trying to leave his father's shadow. Axel appearing in the pilot would have been a great way to kickstart this arc, but having him appear in every episode as a main character was probably a bad idea.

Whether Eddie Murphy agreed or just didn't want to commit to a series role is unknown. Regardless, it is clear that he did not want to appear in every episode like CBS apparently wanted him to. "[CBS] 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,'" Murphy recalled. "I was like, 'I ain't popping in s***.'"

That was the ultimate deal-breaker for the show, despite the high praise the pilot had gotten from test audiences and executives. Of course, those ratings were a double-edged sword — Murphy said that the highest positive engagement the pilot received was when Axel appeared on-screen. "It tested where they have these knobs turn if [a test viewer liked] it," he said, "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. It was like, 'Damn, they breaking knobs?'"

In the years since the "Beverly Hills Cop" show was canceled, the pilot remained lost media, and a follow-up to the original was eventually greenlit and filmed. However, back in December 2022, an anonymous user leaked the pilot onto the Internet Archive, proving the story's legitimacy. While it's no doubt that the show would have been successful, perhaps it was for the best that the story of "Beverly Hills Cop" didn't continue on network television.