That person is Mark Molloy, who made his reputation by directimg commercials (especially for Apple) and this will mark his film directorial debut.
The original Beverly Hills Cop was released in 1984 and cast Murphy as Foley, a Detroit cop whose pursuit of his best friend’s killers leads him to Beverly Hills, where he could not be more of a fish out of water — played to comic and exciting effect. That film's producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, reflected a couple of years ago in an exclusive interview, "Beverly Hills Cop was an enormous success. People don’t realize how big it really was. It was the highest-grossing R-rated movie until recently with The Hangover, and you know how many years that is. So it was a phenomenal success.
“The conventional wisdom back then,” he continued with a laugh, “is that Paramount was really worried about having Eddie star in it, because, you know, for the African American actors who were there, there was a belief that there was a real ceiling on the gross of what they could do, especially in a lead character. But we only believed in Eddie’s talent and, fortunately for us, Paramount ultimately joined us in that.”
Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) sees Axel going deep undercover to investigate a gang of international munitions smugglers, and Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) — the weakest entry in the series by far — which has Axel taking down a counterfeit money ring which is being run out of a Disney-esque theme park in Los Angeles.
Little is known about Beverly Hills Cop IV at this time (the film is in early development), though one would imagine that Axel is going to still be a fish out of water. “Oh, absolutely,” Bruckheimer concurred. “Even more so. There are so many things we’re going to have fun with, with Eddie on this one.”
Given the age of blockbusters we are and have been in, it becomes even more challenging for a movie to stand out. It’s one of the reasons that Bruckheimer is dipping back into his own past with Beverly Hills Cop 4 and the soon-to-be-released Top Gun: Maverick. "The more publicity or knowledge an audience has with a title that they like, it makes it much easier to not only get a new chapter made, but for them to feel like they would like to see where the character has gone over the years that he’s been off-screen, which has been nearly 30 years for Axel Foley and over 30 years for Maverick. We certainly got those characters right the first time and you want to satisfy the audience who want to know where they’ve been and what they’re doing now. It’s definitely a good problem to have."