Eddie Murphy Says 'Beverly Hills Cop 4' Is Dead, But TV Series About Axel Foley's Son In The Works

Also Says His Oscar Night Incident After Losing To Alan Arkin Was Misunderstood

"We’re not close, but I’m hoping in the next few years there will be one," Brett Ratner recently told Collider about the forever in development "Beverly Hills Cop 4." "Eddie and I are even setting up some more of his ideas. I’m hoping that we have a long, fruitful relationship. We’re both still very young, believe it or not. Eddie’s only 50 years old, so I think we have a little bit of time to come up with a great 'Beverly Hills Cop.'" But it looks like the sand in the hour glass has run out as Eddie Murphy is hanging up the idea of starring in a fourth movie and is looking for a younger Axel Foley to take the adventures to the small screen.

Continuing his press run for "Tower Heist," Murphy is on the cover of Rolling Stone and revealed to the magazine that the movie that was a "huge priority" a couple of years ago is now dead. "They're not doing it," he told the magazine. "What I'm trying to do now is produce a TV show starring Axel Foley's son, and Axel is the chief of police now in Detroit. I'd do the pilot, show up here and there. None of the movie scripts were right; it was trying to force the premise. If you have to force something, you shouldn't be doing it. It was always a rehash of the old thing. It was always wrong."

While we're not exactly sold on a "Beverly Hills Cop" TV show, we gotta admire Murphy -- who is no stranger to cashing paychecks -- for avoiding what would have been a remarkably easy payday to reprise his role in a movie that wasn't up to snuff. It was the fall of 2009 that we last heard any real movement on the movie, with Paramount hiring some new writers to tackle the material. Ratner had been envisioning a hard-R sequel at one point but now those dreams will never be realized. Oh well.

But not to worry Murphy fans, as you'll be seeing plenty of the actor in the next while. Of course, there is "Tower Heist" opening next week and the long shelved "A Thousand Words" coming in the spring, which everyone is politely not talking about. But the other big deal on his schedule is hosting the Oscars and Murphy is already lowering expectations. He's already joking that he'll be "the worst host ever" and assures that he won't be doing “any of those crazy dance numbers” either, but we wonder if he'll joke about the infamous "Dreamgirls" incident where he stormed out after not winning the big prize, a moment he tells Rolling Stone was all a big misunderstanding.

"Alan Arkin's performance in 'Little Miss Sunshine' is Oscar-worthy, it's a great performance. That's just the way the shit went. He's been gigging for years and years, the guy's in his seventies. I totally understood and was totally cool. I wasn't like, 'What the fuck?' Afterward, people were like, 'He's upset,' and I'm like, 'I wasn't upset!' What happened was after I lost, I'm just chilling, and I was sitting next to Beyoncé's pops, and he leans over and grabs me and is like, [solemn voice] 'There will be other times.' And then you feel Spielberg on your shoulder going, 'It's all right, man.' Then Clint Eastwood walks by: 'Hey, guy...' So I was like, 'It's not going to be this night!' [Mimes getting up] I didn't have sour grapes at all. That's another reason I wanted to host the show – to show them that I'm down with it," he explains.

So you can get down with Eddie when "Tower Heist" opens on November 4th or during the Oscars on February 26, 2012.