In the age of reboots and sequels to movies released decades ago, it’s no surprise MGM would go back to one of their most recognizable franchises and begin work on a new ROBOCOP movie. Expected to a be a direct sequel to the original 1987 film from Paul Verhoeven with DISTRICT 9’s Neill Blomkamp set to direct, the original’s screenwriters Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner will also be involved in the process, and the former revealed some story details about the new project.
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Neumeier sat down with HN Entertainment recently to talk about the upcoming ROBOCOP project, which is based on an original sequel script he and Miner wrote called ROBOCOP: THE CORPORATE WARS. Now being rewritten by Justin Rhodes (TERMINATOR 6) and under the only-slightly-better title ROBOCOP RETURNS, Neumeier talked about how Blomkamp intends to honor the original and its director.
I don’t want to talk too much about it or somebody will call me and tell me to shut up, but we’re hopeful and I think Neill really really wants to make a good RoboCop movie. His idea is that it should be the proper Verhoeven [Paul Verhoeven] if Verhoeven had directed a movie right after RoboCop. I think that’s what he is trying to achieve and I hope he does. We’ll see what happens next.”
While he didn’t give away too many plot details, he did explain where the new movie is heading in the villain department. While the first movie featured a gonzo villain performance from THE 70’S SHOW dad Kurtwood Smith as Clarence Boddicker, the new villains will find our hero potentially taking on superhumans and corporate fatcats.
“I don’t want to spoil anything but we had some ideas about shall we say about the future of augmented humans and one of our villains is that and our other villain lives in the corporate world somewhat as before, but, you know, the RoboCop thing for me was always exploring man’s relationship with technology, coping with technology.”
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ROBOCOP RETURNS will embrace a similar trend that HALLOWEEN did recently by acting as a sequel that ignores all the other sequels that came after the original. In this franchise's case, that means ignoring ROBOCOP 2 & 3, as well as the toothless remake starring Joel Kinnaman as the title robotic cop from 2014. Blomkamp expressed interest in bringing back the original star Peter Weller for the new movie, and though that seems unlikely to pan out Neumeier says that when writing the script he "kept hearing Peter's voice" in the character. "Peter adds a lot to that," he said.