This shouldn’t be a big surprise, but it will be a welcome one: Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F has officially been given an R-rating for “language throughout, violence and brief drug use.” Each of the previous three movies in the Beverly Hills Cop franchise was also released with an R-rating, so, as I said, no big surprise.
Nearly thirty years after the last movie’s release, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F will find Detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) back on the beat in Beverly Hills. The official synopsis reads: “After his daughter’s life is threatened, she (Taylour Paige) and Foley team up with a new partner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and old pals Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton) to turn up the heat and uncover a conspiracy.” Mark Molloy directed the Beverly Hills Cop sequel from a screenplay by Will Beall and Tom Gormican & Kevin Etten.
Molloy recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the long-awaited sequel, explaining that he first watched Beverly Hills Cop when he was just 11 or 12 in Australia and that “It just blew me away.“
In addition to Eddie Murphy, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F features the return of several original cast members, including Judge Reinhold as Lt. William “Billy” Rosewood, John Ashton as Sgt. John Taggart, Paul Reiser as Det. Jeffrey Friedman, and Bronson Pinchot as Serge. Getting the gang back together was a definite highlight for director Mark Molloy, and he knew he had to put Murphy, Reinhold, and Ashton together to improvise like the old days.
“Eddie, John, and Judge sat in the car and they would just talk s—,” Molloy said. “And they told me that a lot of the first film is some of those moments when they were just allowed to sit there and talk to each other. I always had that image of those three guys on a stakeout in the car together, it was just imprinted in my brain. And then I remember sitting with the three of them in that car, and I actually happened to look around at the crew filming it. I just saw on everyone’s faces, like, Oh man, this is exactly where we want to be right now.“
Molloy continued: “You’ve got one of the greatest comedians, if not in my eyes, the greatest comedian in the world. A huge part of my job is to create a space for improvisation to thrive. I always want to get what’s on the page, but when you have someone like Eddie Murphy, you want to let him be free. And as I look back on the film, some of the funniest moments in the film is when Eddie is improvising and the audience loves it.“
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F will premiere on Netflix on July 3rd.
