More Beverly Hills Cop IV Details Emerge
Can someone perform a drive-by on this project while blasting Harold Faltermeyer instrumentals? We’ve already seen a 180-spin withBeverly Hills Cop IV, with poolguyBrett Ratneroriginallyplaying to the kiddies, then predictably back-pedaling and labeling the film “hard R, brah” followed by atepid reviewof the script and its more serious “standard cop movie” tone (Judge Reinholdgets murdered etc).
Apparently screenwritersMichael BrandtandDerek Haas, who remain hot from adaptingWantedand3:10 to Yuma, have been tinkering with their original draft.CineFoolsjust interviewed Brandt, who clarifies that theBHC4script is a reworking of their older, unrelated script entitledDying Day. This reminds me of how a script entitled “Simon Says” was used, adequately if not definitively so, forDie Hard 3. Brandt had this to say about the project’s progress…
The studio called and the producers called and said hey we just got a new draft of Beverley Hills Cop 4 and the writers we keep hiring keep trying to write a comedy and we don’t want a comedy. …So what they said to us was they wanted to go back to that and Derek and I had written a script two years ago called Dying Day which was kind of a buddy cop thing set in LA with buddy FBI agents but it wasn’t jokey at all it was pretty hardcore everybody died in the end and it was the kind of movie/script that everybody who read it really liked but nobody was ever going to make it into a movie. Too dark. And they said they would like to turn Dying Day into Beverley Hills Cop 4.
These statements align with the script review Latino Review posted last year: it’s more 1997Metroshoot ‘em up generica and less 1994Beverly Hills Cop 3summer FAIL. Brandt does seem to grasp the detective actioner roots of the franchise—noting thatBHCwas at one point a Sly Stallone vehicle—and I do thinkEddie Murphyis totes capable of reprisingAxel Foley’s FU witticisms and Detroit street smarts (speaking of which, save Detroit, Axel);playing Richard Pryorin Bill Condon’s biopic is a promising sign that he wants to be funny again.
But Brett Ratner, oh Ratner, does not possess the jumper cables, the patience, nor the ambition to dust the ’80s off the franchise while paying exquisite homage to what’s come before. He churns out blocks of mediocre that are easy to market and that exude no concept of history, cinematic or otherwise. Combined with a script that wasn’t written with an aged Axel Foley or the legacy in mind—unlike Stupnitsky and Eisenberg’sGhostbusters 3—it sounds as souless as the last sequel. But, you know,darker, man. Why not just have John Singleton remake it with Nick Cannon?
