Jerry Bruckheimer On How Beverly Hills Cop Almost Starred Anyone But Eddie Murphy

It was the top action comedy of its day, but if the uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer had had his way, we'd have had a very different Axel Foley.

Tearaway producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer created a new sort of film with Beverly Hill Cop. A ‘high concept’ movie is one with a plot that can be summed up in a single sentence. In this case, the storyline ran like so - ‘tough urban cop comes to urbane Los Angeles to solve childhood friend’s murder’.

At the time the most profitable movie ever to feature a black star, it’s now impossible to imagine anyone other than Eddie Murphy playing the wise-crackin’, butt-kickin’ Axel Foley. Talk to Jerry Bruckheimer, however, and he’ll tell you the Saturday Night Live star was the last person on his mind when it came to casting the role.

“Beverly Hills Cop was originally a Mickey Rourke project,” says the producer of Top Gun, The Rock and Black Hawk Down. “Mickey was very hot at the time – everyone was excited about his work in Body Heat and Diner – so, for a huge some of money [$400,000] we secured his services.” As someone whose hatred of LA would become Hollywood legend, no one was that shocked when Rourke decided not to make a picture set in and named after the town he detested.