Last year, during the Great Eddie Murphy Comeback Of 2011 that lasted for approximately the length of the A Thousand Words trailer, Murphy signaled his intent to only do fresh, edgy material from now on—like a family-oriented Beverly Hills Cop TV show, because Murphy and irony lost touch sometime after Bowfinger. At the time, it seemed like one of many proposed returns to form that would inevitably be set aside in favor of a high-concept film where, say, Eddie Murphy plays a child-hating misanthrope who wakes up as a smack-talking diaper (Beyond The Pail, maybe), but Vulture reports that no, it's actually happening. What's more, it's now got the involvement of The Shield producer Shawn Ryan, who has partnered with Murphy and Sony TV to pitch their hour-long "buddy cop" procedural with "strong comedic elements" to all the major networks, with Deadline predicting that all of them will eventually bid on it.
Ryan being on board certainly adds the promise of his usual urban grit to what is otherwise a fairly goofy premise, which still reportedly concerns the son of Axel Foley looking to "escape the shadow of his legendary dad"—something he hopes to accomplish by moving from Detroit to Beverly Hills, where his dad made that legend in the first place. ("Goodbye Dad, I'm moving to Tulsa," Foley's son would say in a more logical show that would then immediately be over.) Murphy is still expected to reprise his role in the pilot and several appearances thereafter, thus taking the evolution of his R-rated persona into its more family-friendly iteration to its logical conclusion. Anyway, it seems like all but a done deal at this point. The wait for the announcement of Judge Reinhold as the new Beverly Hills Police Department captain begins now, primarily at Judge Reinhold's house.