Eddie Murphy almost faced off against Slimer and Judge Doom.
During a recent interview with The Associated Press, the comedian, 64, named the three movies he most regrets turning down during his career: “Ghostbusters,” “Rush Hour” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.’ “
“Those are my big three ‘wish I would have done’ movies,” he said.
When asked why he regretted not being in those three films specifically, Murphy quipped, “Well, they were huge, giant hits.”
The “Coming to America” star explained he had to choose between starring in “Ghostbusters” and “Beverly Hills Cop,” one of the biggest hits of his career, so it “worked out cool.”
“Beverly Hills Cop,” the action comedy starring Murphy as Detective Axel Foley, was the highest-grossing movie of 1984 in North America and spawned a series of sequels, most recently “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” in 2024.
Murphy also noted he turned down “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” because it “just sounded ridiculous to me,” but he later regretted it after seeing how “amazing” the movie was. The 1988 comedy that blended cartoon characters with live action actors was one of the biggest blockbusters of that year, and it won the Oscars for sound editing, film editing and visual effects.
Murphy previously said on “The Tonight Show” that he would have played Bob Hoskins’ character, Eddie Valiant, in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” but at the time, he thought blending animation and real people was a bizarre idea. “Now, every time I see it, I feel like an idiot,” he quipped.
Murphy didn’t get into details about “Rush Hour” with AP. But he previously told Complex he turned down Chris Tucker’s part in the 1998 action comedy and instead made “one of my worst movies”: the 1998 comedy “Holy Man,” which was eviscerated by critics and bombed at the box office.
“They came to me and it was two scripts: It was ‘Rush Hour,’ and it’s going to be action comedy, and you’re going to be [with] Jackie Chan, and it’s action [in the] summertime, running, all this physical stuff, and this other one was [me] in a robe in Miami,” he joked. “It was a no-brainer! And we went to Miami and made a horrendous film.”