Eddie Murphy

As movie cast reunions go, few will generate more nostalgic laughs than the one assembled for “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.”

The fourth installment in the franchise (streaming now on Netflix) comes 40 years after the original Eddie Murphy launch pad, and 30 years after the third movie in the series.

But John Landis’ 1994 film “Beverly Hills Cop III” fared less well at the box office than its predecessors and noticeably excluded a few key players, including John Ashton as the lovable but tough cop John Taggart and Paul Reiser as affable detective Jeffrey Friedman.

This time, the core “Cop” team is back, including Ashton and Reiser, as well as Bronson Pinchot as art dealer Serge. A few newcomers to Murphy’s humor-meets-mayhem camp include Taylour Paige as his daughter Jane, Kevin Bacon as Captain Grant, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as cop Bobby Abbott.

“We had done three ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ movies, but the third one is a little soft compared to the other two, and it’s because we don’t have all of the people from the original,” Murphy tells USA TODAY.

“Now, we’re back with John back as Taggart, we’ve got Paul, we’ve got Bronson, you just needed all the ingredients that were in the first picture,” he says. “Everyone who was alive − well, except for Lisa Eilbacher (she played Axel’s sleuthing pal Jenny), who is very much still alive − but everyone else, we brought them back. And it was so good to be back on set with them.”

We take a quick look at what some of those original “Cop” cast members have been up to over the decades:

Murphy’s huge success with “Beverly Hills Cop” was followed by a steady string of movies with mixed box-office results, including “The Golden Child” and “Another 48 Hrs.”

But in 1988, Murphy found his comedic grove again, teaming up with pal

Arsenio Hall for “Coming to America,” a premise he’d return to in 2021’s “Coming 2 America.” He played multiple characters, a nod to his idol Peter Sellers, and would again showcase his chameleon talents in 1996’s “The Nutty Professor.”

The 63-year-old star’s resume is too lengthy and diverse to summarize.

Suffice to say, he has recorded albums as a vocalist, created two classic stand-up specials (“Delirious” and “Raw”), made voicing a donkey cool (“Shrek”), won a Primetime Emmy for his “Saturday Night Live” hosting return, was given the Mark Twain Prize for

IMAGES VALERIE MACON/AFP VIA GETTY From left: Judge Reinhold, Eddie Murphy and John Ashton attend Netflix’s premiere of “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” on June 20.