Eddie Murphy Really Wanted to Star in ‘Ghost’

A handful of famous actors, including Michael J. Fox, turned down the chance to play Sam Wheat in 1990’s Ghost opposite Demi Moore before Patrick Swayze landed his career-changing role. Fox later told Whoopi Goldberg he made a huge mistake by passing on the movie — “I’m a fucking idiot.”

Paramount turned to other actors as well, reports Far Out. Harrison Ford. Tom Hanks. Kevin Bacon. Even Paul Hogan, hot of Crocodile Dundee, was considered. But one guy who never got a shot? The studio’s biggest movie star: Eddie Murphy. The comedian’s films brought in more than $1.3 billion during the 1980s. 

“I deserved for them to come to me first,” Murphy says in the book Off the Record, excerpted by Newsweek in 2007. “That’s how you treat your biggest star. You give him the opportunity to say he’s not interested. I would have been interested in doing Ghost.” But Paramount didn’t even give Murphy a script to read. There’s no way of knowing if Murphy would have agreed to star in the film but he should have got the shot. 

Murphy turned down his share of other films that turned out to be huge hits, too. When Parade asked Murphy in 2021 what movie he regretted turning down, he offered up another project with a supernatural theme: Ghostbusters. “I was supposed to be in Ghostbusters,” he explained. “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.”

Murphy had another dream role that never got off the ground — his own version of Godfather III. “I pitched a story to Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola and Al Pacino,” he told Playboy. “Everybody loved it, and then Pacino said, ‘You know something? ‘Everybody loves it’ means it’ll never happen.’ My idea was for me and Stallone and Pacino to be in it together.”

Point the finger at Paramount once again since the studio believed Murphy’s idea was too expensive to consider. “It would have cost $80 million to get everybody together; so before we could even shoot a roll of film, we’d be $40 or $50 million below the line,” Murphy said.

What other movies are in Murphy’s alternate-universe IMDb profile? Imagine a world in which the comedian would have starred in these pictures:

• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: “Eddie Murphy said he would kill to be in a Star Trek movie,” according to Leonard Nimoy, who tossed around script ideas with the comic.
• Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: Director Michael Ritchie and Murphy took this one to Paramount, who turned it down. Sound familiar? Another studio made it a few years later with Steve Martin.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit: This one gave Murphy his Michael J. Fox moment. “Every time I see it,” he has said, “I feel like an idiot.”