The “piece of shit” Eddie Murphy movie originally written for Mel Gibson: “Intended to be played very straight”
Despite spending the end of the 1980s and most of the 1990s as two of the biggest names in the business, Eddie Murphy and Mel Gibson weren’t interchangeable, even if their careers did have one or two similarities.
They both cemented themselves as box office draws with a buddy cop comedy, but it’s just as difficult to imagine Gibson as Axel Foley as it is to envision Murphy as Martin Riggs. The Mad Max headliner could have easily played the original, Sylvester Stallone-oriented version of the character, but not the one that made it to the screen in Beverly Hills Cop.
Murphy became one of Hollywood’s highest-paid and bankable stars by weaponising his boundless charisma, energy, and comic timing, with most of the characters he played being extensions of his own personality. Gibson had a more dangerous brand of charisma and screen presence to spare, and he knew how to drop a one-liner, but his selling points were markedly different.
However, they both circled the same film at one point, and Murphy got the short end of the stick. 1986’s The Golden Child may have been the latest in a long line of smash hits for the Saturday Night Live favourite, but with the benefit of hindsight, he didn’t sugar-coat his feelings on the flick by calling it “a piece of shit.”
After the titular Tibetan child is kidnapped by Charles Dance’s villain to plunge the fate of humanity into a state of peril, a Los Angeles priestess decides that Murphy’s social worker is the chosen one who will save the world. Hijinks ensue, which aren’t especially entertaining, but because Murphy played the lead, it made almost $150 million at the box office.
It was clearly tailored to suit his sensibilities, but the original version was a much more serious affair. Dennis Feldman’s original draft was called The Rose of Tibet, and was described as a “Raymond Chandler movie with supernatural elements,” with the writer confirming that the story “was intended to be played very straight by Mel Gibson, but Eddie Murphy loved it, and took it.”
Coincidentally, one of the directors he met with to potentially helm the project was Gibson’s old Mad Max cohort, George Miller. When he passed, John Carpenter was approached, but he preferred to re-team with Kurt Russell for Big Trouble in Little China, opening the door for journeyman Michael Ritchie to get the nod.
Murphy regretted making The Golden Child, and used the fact that it was shite to point out that he was more than capable of elevating even the most mediocre pictures into winners, which begs the question of whether it would have fared as well among cinemagoers had it been a more sombre and serious affair with Gibson taking top billing.
It’s debatable, since he didn’t really take off in America until Lethal Weapon was released the following year, although the idea of a Raymond Chandler-inspired hybrid of mystery thriller and supernatural fantasy does sound more enticing than the uninspired and largely unfunny Murphy vehicle that audiences ended up with.
