8. Eddie Murphy In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Otherwise known as Star Trek: The One With The Whales. You can thank producers for a great deal of things, mostly making backers come up with the funds to pay for things. However, they seem to often have a great deal of awful ideas when it comes to plot ideas. You only need to remember that Jon Peters wanted a giant spider to fight Superman in the third act of Kevin Smith's version of the work. He eventually got his way on another project and it appeared in Wild Wild West. So what did the producers want to do with Star Trek IV? They wanted Eddie Murphy to be in it. Yep. Eddie Murphy. It does seem sillier now that Murphy isn't the bankable box office draw he once was. He can thank such flops as Pluto Nash and Norbit. The sad thing is that Eddie Murphy is a very good straight actor just watch Dreamgirls. But instead, he keeps taking these comedy roles that are simply awful. I guess it puts bread on the table. But Voyage Home came out in 1986. When was it was being made the year earlier, Murphy had just hit the big time. You see, Beverly Hills Cop just came out. During the promotional tour for Meet Dave, Murphy explained what happened:
I was a big Trekkie and they were like 'ok we are going to develop something with you' and they wrote something where they come back to San Francisco. Then they were 'and you are going to be the jive dude in San Francisco with Spock' and I was like 'I don't want to be the jive dude with Spock, I want to have pointed ears and a phaser and I want to beam and I want to do all of that' and I never got to do it.
So you never know, maybe he would have been good in Star Trek. It was around the peak of Murphy's career and would have been in one of the better cinematic releases of the franchise. However, it just goes to show that the role he would have played was redeveloped into a love interest for Kirk and was played by Catherine Hicks.