‘Ghostbusters’: The movie Eddie Murphy rejected and said “sounds like a crock”
Plenty of Saturday Night Live alumni have gone on to enjoy lengthy careers as Hollywood stars, but none have risen up to the top of the Hollywood A-list anywhere near as quickly as Eddie Murphy did in the 1980s.
The fast-talking comedian’s first-ever role in a feature film came in 1982’s influential action comedy 48 Hrs, which saw him earn a Golden Globe nomination for ‘New Star of the Year – Actor’. Murphy followed it up with the classic Trading Places the year later. Moving on, 1984’s Best Defense was wholly forgotten in the wake of Beverly Hills Cop, which launched a long-running franchise that’s returning to screens next year, earned an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ and wound up as the year’s top-earning release at the domestic box office.
However, there was another 1984 juggernaut that will also make a return in 2024 that Murphy actively fought for, only for him to reject the offer. His loss proved to be Ernie Hudson’s gain, though, with Dan Aykroyd initially seeking the erstwhile Axel Foley to play the part of Winston Zeddemore in Ghostbusters.
Speaking to Parade, Murphy admitted that he’d love to have done both projects but found himself in an “either/or” situation: “I was supposed to be in Ghostbusters. We were doing Trading Places, and Dan Aykroyd was like, ‘This movie Ghostbusters‘. But then Beverly Hills Cop came along. I wish I could have been in both, but I did Beverly Hills Cop instead of Ghostbusters.”
While that makes it sound like an issue of timing and nothing else, Murphy had previously been a lot more scathing of the screenplay that landed in his hands. During an interview with Extra, he confirmed that Aykroyd had been telling him about the supernatural comedy he’d been working on, but his thoughts on what would ultimately become a gargantuan hit and a money-spinning IP were less than enthusiastic. He said: “I was like, ‘This sounds like a crock to me.'”
The what-ifs of Ghostbusters are almost as fascinating as the movie itself, with John Belushi another name under consideration to inhabit Peter Venkman prior to his death. Murphy doesn’t seem too shaken up about losing out on his chance to wield a proton pack and protect New York City from an otherworldly invasion, although the massive success of Beverly Hills Cop no doubt helped soften the blow significantly.
The original film – and the rest of the franchise by extension – would have turned out markedly different were Murphy to answer the call, but Hudson has made the role his own and will be reprising it once again in next year’s Frozen Empire, with Murphy’s own legacy sequel Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley on its way to Netflix in 2024.
