Eddie Murphy is set to star in the action comedy Blue Falcon.
The 63-year-old actor has landed a role in the two-hander film that has a script by London Has Fallen‘writer Chad St. John. St. John’s previous action films have garnered significant box office success, with London Has Fallen earning over $205 million globally.
In Blue Falcon, Murphy will portray a retired superspy who heads for the destination wedding of his estranged son – only to find himself in proximity with his archrival. The film’s premise combines elements of espionage and family drama, genres that have historically performed well at the box office.
The Coming to America star is producing the picture for his Eddie Murphy Productions company with Charisse Hewitt-Webster as well as John Davis for Davis Films and Cliff Roberts through Syndicate Entertainment. Davis Films has a track record of successful productions, with their films generating over $5 billion in worldwide box office revenue.
Murphy will once again lend his voice to Donkey in the upcoming film ‘Shrek 5‘, which is set for release in 2026, and revealed that he would like to make a movie that combines every role he has played previously. The Shrek franchise has already earned more than $3.5 billion globally.
“Sure. We’re just doing another Shrek, which is going to be great,” he told Australia’s WHO magazine last year. “We already did Coming 2 America and we’re working on a new script for another movie right now. But I like the idea of maybe doing a mash-up movie with all my characters and have me play them all. That would be fun. But if the idea is good and the script is right, I would return to any one of my characters again.”
The actor reprised his role as Axel Foley in the movie Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F last year and explained that it took three decades for the project to reach the big screen as he wanted “evolution” for the character rather than a “generic” story idea. The original Beverly Hills Cop trilogy earned over $735 million worldwide.
“The reason why the movie didn’t come together for years and years and years is because, in all the scripts that I read, there was no evolution,” Murphy told Screen Rant. “It was just, ‘Axel’s coming back now, and he’s on a new mission’.
“It was like, ‘OK, now this has happened’. It was just the generic things. ‘This happens, and that happens, then this happens, and that happens’. And nothing worked.”
The star explained that it was the storyline about Axel’s estrangement from his daughter Jane Saunders (Taylour Paige) that eventually piqued his interest. This focus on family dynamics has become increasingly important in action franchises.
“Once they added the element where Axel was married, and he’s not with his wife anymore, and they have a child and he’s estranged from his child, and he’s still in this job and all his contemporaries are leaving… All he’s got is his job, and he’s got this horrible relationship,” Murphy said.
“And the reason Axel’s back in Beverly Hills on the surface is cops and robbers, but behind the scenes, it’s really to reconcile with his daughter and all that stuff. Once we added that element, then we had a movie.”
The announcement of Blue Falco adds to Murphy‘s impressive filmography, which spans over four decades and includes more than 40 films. His movies have collectively earned over $6.7 billion at the global box office, making him one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars. The new project is expected to begin production later this year, with a targeted release date in 2025.
