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The Action Star Who Originally Had the Eddie Murphy Role in ‘Beverly Hills Cop’

The story was compared to the opening scene from ‘Saving Private Ryan’ at one point

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The origins of Beverly Hills Cop can be traced back to the late 1970s, when the basic idea for the film was first conceived. Between then and the movie’s 1984 release, the story underwent several significant overhauls. Initially a serious action film, it was rewritten to include more comedic elements, which got the attention of actor Mickey Rourke for a little while. Rewrites were once again ordered to customize the lead role for him, but he ultimately dropped out in favor of doing The Pope of Greenwich Village.

From there, Rocky actor Sylvester Stallone got involved and began rewriting it himself. The result was the story once again returning to its action roots, mainly because Stallone couldn’t picture himself comically terrorizing Beverly Hills. By the time he finished his version, he said it was comparable to the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan, in which the troops stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day. For the finale, Stallone had himself riding around in a stolen Lamborghini and playing chicken with a freight train. 

According to screenwriter Daniel Petrie Jr., what Stallone was proposing would’ve raised the budget far beyond what Paramount Pictures was looking to spend. They gave him two options: Either work with the cheaper, funnier script, or take his story elsewhere—minus the part about an out-of-town cop causing trouble in Beverly Hills. Stallone opted to try making it for another studio and reworked a lot of what he’d written into 1986’s Cobra. This left Paramount in a tough situation, however, because now they were a month away from shooting and had no lead actor. 

Luckily, they were able to get Eddie Murphy at the last minute and—surprise, surprise—even more rewrites were in order. Though, as Petrie tells it, the changes weren’t for Murphy, as his only request was that the character be the same age as him. Murphy’s main contribution to the story came during filming, when he would improvise his dialogue and sometimes play the straight man to the other actors.

Stallone’s connection to the franchise was later referenced in Beverly Hills Cop II, which features a brief shot of the poster for the previous year’s Cobra. That’s, of course, in addition to John Ashton’s character saying, “F–k Rambo,” at one point:

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