‘Beverly Hills Cop’ Could Have Had a Very Different Axel Foley

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• Eddie Murphy’s performance as wise-cracking detective Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop was perfectly cast and essential to the success of the film.
• Sylvester Stallone was originally cast in the lead role and planned to make a more violent version of the movie, but creative differences led to his departure from the project.
• The script for Beverly Hills Cop went through multiple rewrites, eventually resulting in the iconic character of Axel Foley and the comedic tone of the film.

Eddie Murphy is perfectly cast as wise-cracking, street-smart Detroit detective Axel Foley in Martin Brest’s action comedy Beverly Hills Cop, it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role. The film was a massive success, bringing in over $234 million domestically on a $15 million budget and becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie at the time, a title it held until almost 20 years later when 2003’s The Matrix Reloaded knocked it out of the top spot. It spawned two sequels with a third currently in the works and scheduled for release next year. But we almost got a very different version of the original 1984 movie, with a very different Axel Foley at the helm. Sylvester Stallone was originally cast in the lead role, and if the actor had gotten his way, Beverly Hills Cop would have been a lot more violent and a lot less funny.

Mickey Rourke Was First Cast as the Lead in ‘Beverly Hills Cop’

The first iteration of Beverly Hills Cop followed a detective from Pittsburgh named Elly Axel, and the first actor who signed on for the role was Mickey Rourke, whom producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer cast after seeing his picture in a magazine. However, the studio wasn’t satisfied with Danilo Bach’s script, which was a straight-action movie with a grimmer tone. Simpson and Bruckheimer then brought in relative newcomer Daniel Petrie Jr. for rewrites, which added the comedic touch the film needed but significantly pushed back production. Tired of delays, Rourke dropped out to instead star in the crime comedy The Pope of Greenwich Village.

In the meantime, Paramount searched for a director. As the New York Times reported, Simpson and Bruckheimer had their hearts set on Martin Brest, who had made a name for himself with his first feature film, Going in Style. But Brest had recently been fired from the set of WarGames and was hesitant to take on a new project. The producers hounded him to the point that he took his phone off the hook – but even that wasn’t enough to deter Jerry Bruckheimer. Finally, the two agreed to flip a coin: if the result was “heads,” Brest would do the movie. ”I was scared to look,” Brest told the Times in 1984. ”But I had made a firm commitment to adhere by the outcome. It came up heads, so I said I’d do it.”

Sylvester Stallone Rewrote the Script for ‘Beverly Hills Cop’

Following Rourke’s departure, studio execs offered the role of Axel to Stallone, reportedly without the approval of Simpson and Bruckheimer, according to AFI. At the urging of his agent, Ron Meyer, Stallone accepted the offer but was less enthusiastic when he saw the script. Worried that the comedic tone didn’t play to his strengths, he completely rewrote it – against Meyer’s advice – renaming the protagonist Axel Cobretti, removing most of the comedy, and playing up the action. “[B]y the time I was done, it looked like the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan on the beaches of Normandy,” he told Ain’t It Cool News in 2006. “Believe it or not, the finale was me in a stolen Lamborghini playing chicken with an oncoming freight train being driven by the ultra-slimy bad guy.”

Neither the producers, the studio, nor Brest were happy with the rewrites. Though Simpson praised the new script to the New York Times, other sources quote him as complaining that it had Axel spending too much time “soaping down his muscles,” and Paramount was displeased by the budget increase that would be required for the extended action scenes. Just two weeks before shooting was scheduled to start, Stallone met with Brest, Petrie, and the producers and eventually agreed to quit the project – though stories differ as to how that agreement was reached.

Some sources claim that Stallone dropped out to focus on his next film, the musical comedy Rhinestone co-starring Dolly Parton, which was a critical and commercial failure. But Petrie told Money Into Light in 2012 that Paramount gave Stallone an ultimatum: he could make Beverly Hills Cop using Petrie’s script, or he could take his rewrites and use them in another movie, as long as it didn’t revolve around a cop in Beverly Hills. According to Petrie, Stallone took option two, and his rewrites eventually evolved into his 1986 film Cobra, a violent, action-heavy movie that follows L.A. detective Marion “Cobra” Cobretti. Unfortunately, however, it doesn’t end in a Lamborghini versus freight train game of chicken.

Don Simpson, however, tells a different story about Stallone’s departure. As Charles Fleming wrote in his 1998 book High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess, Simpson claimed that both he and Stallone were interested in “youth treatments,” and that he was able to get Stallone an appointment with an elite Swiss doctor who was experimenting with sheep hormone injections to “increase tumescence.” According to Simpson, Stallone quit the film to fly to Switzerland, and the studio moved on without him.

After Stallone’s Departure the Script Was Rewritten Again

Petrie then undertook still more rewrites, which included changing the main character’s name to Axel Foley. Simpson and Bruckheimer, on the other hand, searched for a new lead. Simpson takes credit for suggesting Eddie Murphy, whom they were able to sign within two days, according to the New York Times.

Petrie continued revising the script up until the day shooting started, and the production sometimes worked with multiple versions of the script simultaneously. Brest also frequently encouraged Murphy to improvise, and in his Times interview he praised the actor’s ability to come up with note-perfect ad-libs on the spot. For instance, the scene in which Axel talks his way into a fancy hotel by pretending to have herpes is entirely Murphy’s creation.

Axel Foley wasn’t the only character whose casting didn’t follow the standard route. While doing research in Detroit, the New York Times reports, Simpson and Bruckheimer toured a real murder scene, where Detective Gilbert Hill allowed them to see the body and interview bystanders. In thanks, they cast Hill as Inspector Douglas Todd, Foley’s superior in the Detroit PD. In fact, the crime scene’s location across from Mumford High School inspired the producers to add the iconic Mumford Phys. Ed. Dept. shirt to Foley’s wardrobe.

Often, a troubled production and multiple script rewrites spell doom for a film, but Beverly Hills Cop proved to be a major exception. The movie spent 14 weeks in the number one spot at the box office, tied with 1982’s Tootsie for the third most in history. Along with 1983’s Trading Places, it’s responsible for vaulting Murphy to superstardom. And with much of the original cast returning for Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley, its legacy continues to grow.

Beverly Hills Cop is available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.

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