I remain unconvinced that we will ever see a Beverly Hills Cop 4Beverly Hills Cop 3 came out in 1994 and made just $42 million in the U.S. against a $50 million budget. It was also terrible, although that last part has never stopped a studio from making further sequels before. Still it’s more than 20 years since we saw Axel Foley patrolling the streets of Beverly Hills. Wouldn’t he be retired by now?

I guess not. Despite my role as New York City Skeptic, Deadline reports that Beverly Hills Cop 4 is moving forward, with Eddie Murphy and a new set of directors: Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. The pair of Belgian filmmakers recently made Black, an award-winner at last fall’s Toronto International Film Festival about a Romeo and Juliet-style relationship in modern Brussels. They will work from a script by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles writers Josh Appelbaum & Andre Nemec that, per Deadline, “will bring Murphy’s street smart cop character Axel Foley back to his Detroit origins.” But he’s supposed to be the Beverly Hills cop! What is this world coming to?!?

Beverly Hills Cop 4 was previously scheduled for a March 2016 release under the direction of Brett Ratner. There was also a Beverly Hills Cop TV pilot for CBS a few years ago that starred Brandon T. Jackson as Axel Foley’s son, which never went anywhere because Murphy refused to appear regularly on the show. While that series never aired, it was made, and long-gestating sequels are getting produced all over the place right now (Independence Day came out a couple summers after BHC 3 and its sequel is now this month’s big action movie). So maybe I’m being overly cynical and this thing will happen with these two young filmmakers. If it does, it could go into production either late this year or in early 2017. Hit the theme song! Someone give me a banana and a tail pipe!

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