Sylvester Stallone Borrowed Ideas From Eddie Murphy’s ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ To Make His Own Cop Film After Being Rejected By Studio
Sylvester Stallone has been in the Hollywood entertainment industry for over five decades. He has won numerous accolades for his performances including a Golden Globe Award and nominations for three Academy Awards. He is well known for his work in action films and continues to star in those despite his increasing age.
In 1984, Sylvester Stallone was offered the lead role in the 1984 film Beverly Hills Cop after Mickey Rourke backed out from the project. However, as fate would have it, even Stallone couldn’t star as the lead hero, and the role went to Eddie Murphy, who did a great job. Two things came out of this: the first was Beverly Hills Cop, and the second was Stallone’s 1986 film Cobra.
Sylvester Stallone’s Rewriting of Beverly Hills Cop Script Was Rejected
After producer Don Simpson’s 1983 film Flashdance succeeded at the box office, he and his production partner Jerry Bruckheimer started working on the Beverly Hills Cop movie, which was called Beverly Hills at the time. Mickey Rourke signed a holding contract after the script underwent some major changes. However, Rourke wanted more changes, but the holding contract ran out before that happened and the actor decided to leave the project.
This is where Sylvester Stallone came in and he made some rather big changes to the script which did not sit well with the studio. This left him with two options: either work in Beverly Hills Cop with the original script or take his changes and make an entirely new movie. He was smart enough to choose the second option which came to fruition in 1986 with the film Cobra, in which he starred as Lt. Marion ‘Cobra’ Cobretti.
Stallone addressed this matter later in an interview (via Ain’t It Cool News). He said:
“Somehow, me trying to comically terrorize Beverly Hills is not the stuff that great yuk-festivals are made from. So I re-wrote the script to suit what I do best, and by the time I was done, it looked like the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan on the beaches of Normandy….. Needless to say, they dropkicked me and my script out of the office, and the rest is history.”
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The rest truly is history because both movies are great in their own right. In fact, Cobra’s commercial success led to the setting up of the Tango and Cash star’s production company White Eagle Enterprises. It is also not clear how much of the script Stallone borrowed from Beverly Hills Cop but by the looks of it, the only idea he took was to make a cop movie.
Why Was Sylvester Stallone’s Script for Beverly Hills Cop Rejected
The script for Beverly Hills Cop seemed to lack something that both Micky Rourke and Sylvester Stallone tried to get into the film. However, it is not known whether changes were made after Stallone’s exit from the project because the movie did quite well with or without the changes.
Screenwriter Daniel Petrie revealed the reason behind the rejection of the Rocky star’s script for Beverly Hills Cop (via Money Into Light), saying:
“He [Stallone] was going to play the lead but he re-wrote the script and made it more of an action movie again. That had the natural effect of raising the budget to a level that was higher than Paramount wanted to spend on the picture.”
Considering that even with a larger budget Cobra made only half of the collection that Beverly Hills Cop made, Paramount’s decision was definitely in its favor.
