Seven years after the events from the second film Detroit Police Department detective Axel Foley plans to arrest a car theft ring at a chop shop.

When the group flees in the box truck, Axel gives chase, but is intercepted by Secret Service Agent Steve Fulbright.

After Todd's funeral, Axel learns that several clues left behind by the killers point to Wonder World, a theme park in Beverly Hills, California, owned by "Uncle Dave" Thornton.

Axel rescues two children from the Spider after the guards accidentally jam the ride and is brought to park manager Orrin Sanderson.

They inform him that the Wonder World park's designer and Dave's close friend, Roger Frye, has mysteriously disappeared while inspecting the grounds two weeks earlier, leaving only a letter with a cryptic message.

Later, Axel digs deeper into a closed-off section of the park and learns DeWald and Sanderson are using Wonder World as a front for a counterfeiting ring.

That evening, Axel meets with Uncle Dave to ask him about further details to find a piece of viable evidence, and discovers that Frye's warning letter is actually written on a sheet of the stolen mint paper.

After getting away from DeWald and bringing Uncle Dave to a hospital, Axel sets out to prove his innocence by storming the park, calling Rosewood and Flint to assist him.

The only reason to do a Cop III is to beat the bank, and Paramount ain't gonna write me no check as big as I want to do something like that.

'"[7] During the script's early drafts, the plot concerned Foley, Rosewood, and Taggart going to London to rescue Captain Bogomil (Ronny Cox), who was being held hostage by terrorists during an International Police Convention.

However, problems such as scripting issues and budgeting caused pre-production to slow to the point where both John Ashton and Ronny Cox had to drop out due to obligations to other film projects.

Ashton's part was re-written as John Flint (Héctor Elizondo) and dialogue was inserted to explain that Taggart had retired and moved to Phoenix.

[citation needed] In an interview in 2012, Ronny Cox said, "They wanted me to be in Beverly Hills Cop III, but...I read the script.

The last would have involved British gangsters, loosely based on the real-life Kray brothers, who were captured in Detroit and transported to London by Jeffrey (Axel's friend from Beverly Hills Cop and Beverly Hills Cop II, played by Paul Reiser), and Axel would have gone overseas after the gangsters's henchmen broke them out of custody and murdered Jeffrey.

This was scrapped because producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer decided it was too close to the story of Michael Douglas's 1989 film Black Rain.

[citation needed] When writer Steven E. de Souza was brought in, he originally wrote the story as more "Die Hard in a theme park".

Paramount had earlier told Simpson and Bruckheimer that they would only outlay $25 million for a proposed version to be set in New York City, one of the main reasons that the producing team parted ways with the studio.

While Harold Faltermeyer did not return to score this film, his co-producer from the previous franchise entries, Keith Forsey, did produce and co-write a new song entitled "Keep the Peace", performed by INXS.

Beverly Hills Cop III was criticized harshly and currently holds a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 58 reviews.

The critical consensus reads; "Despite being set at an amusement park, Beverly Hills Cop III forgets to have any fun as it churns out uninspired violence and witless gags, with an uncharacteristically lethargic Eddie Murphy not helping matters.

[21] Caryn James of The New York Times wrote that the film is designed to be a foolproof and safe money-maker, but Murphy plays Foley too straight.

[32] Speaking on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Eddie Murphy noted that the first and second Beverly Hills Cop "are really good" while the third one lacked "a great villain.

He commented that the third entry in the franchise failed to connect with audiences due to the omission of Sergeant John Taggart (portrayed by John Ashton), and also because the stakes in the movie weren’t high enough compared to its two predecessors: “The reason Beverly Hills Cop 3 was soft was because Taggart's not in the movie, and the villain isn't villainous enough, and Axel didn't have any skin in the game.

[36][37] In September 2006 a script, an amalgamation of several earlier drafts, was presented to Murphy who was reported to be "very happy" with the outline which was described as an attempt to recapture the "feel of the original".

[51] On June 27, 2014, in an interview with Rolling Stone, Murphy discussed returning to the edgier type character of Axel Foley after years of making family-friendly films.

[citation needed] According to studio reports on the film's plot, Foley returns to Detroit after leaving his job in Beverly Hills and he's faced with the coldest winter on record to navigate the new rules and old enemies of one of America's most tenacious cities.

[53][54] On October 1, 2019, in an interview with Collider, Murphy confirmed that production on Beverly Hills Cop IV will commence once the filming of Coming 2 America has wrapped.

[55] On November 14, 2019, Deadline Hollywood announced that Paramount Pictures made a one-time license deal with an option for a sequel to Netflix to create the fourth film.

[56] By May 2020, after delays in the filmmaking business caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Arbi and Fallah confirmed they are still attached as co-directors and that a new screenwriter was working on a new script for the film.