Eddie Murphy’s Best Film Almost Had Sylvester Stallone In It

While Eddie Murphy’s celebrity grew during the late 1970s and early 1980s thanks to a burgeoning stand-up comedy career and a successful run on Saturday Night Live, it wasn’t until the release of Beverly Hill Cop in 1984 that his star truly took off.

Murphy may have Sylvester Stallone to thank for landing this job, even though it would have happened in a different way with another production. That’s because Stallone was reportedly one of the studio’s original choices for the project, and he was quite close to appearing in it until Eddie Murphy was cast at the last minute.

Look, Hollywood’s past is littered with what-ifs and near-misses, with practically every film having a chronology that might have taken it in drastically different directions in terms of casting and plot.

But, given the wide variety of outcomes this film could have had and where it placed a handful of actors, Beverly Hills Cop is a particularly intriguing junction of fame and skill. Eddie Murphy wasn’t the first pick for the role, according to CBR. That actor was Sylvester Stallone, who was attached to star in the picture practically up to the commencement of filming.

Sylvester Stallone, as previously reported, had a completely different vision for the picture. He took over the script and changed it into an action picture, rather than a comedy. Stallone’s character would have arrived in Los Angeles as Axel Cobretti from Pittsburgh, rather than Axel Foley from Detroit.

The film would have been low on humour and big on killing, more in line with Stallone’s approach at the time, given that it was the years leading up to Rambo. Is Cobretti a name you’ve heard before? Marion Cobretti was the primary character in Cobra, a film that Stallone’s rewrites on Beverly Hills Cop finally became when he walked away from the original production.

The actor and studio disagreed about the tone of the picture and the cost of making a lot more things blow up, so Sylvester Stallone walked away from Beverly Hills Cop only a few weeks before the planned start of filming.

When Sylvester Stallone stepped out, it was Eddie Murphy’s turn, and the screenplay was rewritten for the better. With Murphy’s Foley arriving from Detroit, shoving bananas in tailpipes, and breaking a large drug ring with the aid of Rosewood and Taggart, it followed the comedy-action approach.