‘Beverly Hills Cop’ Could Have Had a Very Different Axel Foley

Eddie Murphy is perfectly cast as wise-cracking, street-smart Detroit detective Axel Foley in Martin Brest's action comedy Beverly Hills Cop, it's hard to imagine anyone else in the role. The film was a massive success, bringing in over $234 million domestically on a $15 million budget and becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie at the time, a title it held until almost 20 years later when 2003's The Matrix Reloaded knocked it out of the top spot. It spawned two sequels with a third currently in the works and scheduled for release next year. But we almost got a very different version of the original 1984 movie, with a very different Axel Foley at the helm. Sylvester Stallone was originally cast in the lead role, and if the actor had gotten his way, Beverly Hills Cop would have been a lot more violent and a lot less funny.

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