It’s been nearly three decades since moviegoers spent time with Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley, but after decades worth of delays and setbacks, Beverly Hills Cop IV is finally moving forward. Officially titled Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley, this next installment will be available for Netflix subscribers to exclusively stream, and the cast has gradually been coming together over the last month. Now it’s been revealed that Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley won’t have to play a long game of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, because he’s appearing in the upcoming movie.
In the wake of Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley kicking off production, Deadline shared that Kevin Bacon has been added to the cast. Unfortunately, no details have been provided about his character, so it’s hard to say right now whether he’ll be an ally or enemy to Eddie Murphy’s starring protagonist. That said, it’s nice to see Murphy and Bacon finally working together, as these two have both been heavy cinematic hitters for decades.
The first Beverly Hills Cop was released in 1984, the same year that Kevin Bacon shined as Ren McCormack in Footloose. We could spend all day talking about the other notable entries on Bacon’s resume, but to narrow our scope on his more recent work, he was last seen in the slasher movie They/Them, which can be streamed with a Peacock subscription, and he also starred in Space Oddity, which was directed by his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June. In the TV realm, Bacon is leading the Showtime crime drama series City on a Hill.
As mentioned earlier, among the things we know about Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley is the lineup of actors joining Eddie Murphy and Kevin Bacon. In late August, right after principal photography began, it was reported that Taylour Paige and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were added to the cast. Then on September 21, it was announced that Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Paul Reiser and Bronson Pinchot will reprise their respective roles from the original Beverly Hills Cop trilogy for this sequel. Reinhold starred as Billy Rosewood in all three of those movies, John Ashton and Paul Reiser respectively played John Taggart and Jeffrey Friedman in the first two movies, and Bonson Pinchot appeared as Serge in the first and third movies.
Behind the scenes, Mark Molloy is making his feature directorial debut on Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley. He replaced Bad Boys for Life helmers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah in April after the duo decide to focus on Batgirl, which ended up being scrapped. Josh Appelbaum, Will Beall and André Nemec all worked on the script, but we remain in the dark about the sort of craziness that the older Axel will get into for his fourth cinematic outing.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley doesn’t have a release date yet, but with the movie currently shooting, it’s a good bet it will come out on Netflix sometime in 2023. Look through our 2023 release schedule to learn what movies are officially slotted for next year.
