RoboCop (2014) deserved more credit than he got, poor guy! Well, not so much a guy anymore as a random assortment of organs that were formally a guy – RoboCop has thrilled cult sci-fi fans for four decades!
An oddball in the superhero genre, the laconic cyborg in question remains in limbo, prompting long-time enthusiasts to ask: where is he now? Is their favorite law enforcement official in chromed armor going on patrol once more?
The Future, Passed!
In the likely future of RoboCop, sci-fi fanatics understand that therein lie infinite possibilities. RoboCop, as a character in canon video game media as well as comic books, has come across the likes of the Aliens (yes – those ‘Aliens‘), Predators (yes – those ‘Predators‘), and Terminators (yes – Arnie ‘Terminators‘!).
Given the CGI uptick and advancement in cinematic immersion, it’s easy and feasible to see Peter Weller and Arnold Schwarzenegger slugging it out in an abandoned nuclear warehouse of the future. This type of confrontation could be easily visualized given CGI advancement and films such as 2017’s Ready Player One, which depicted multiple crossover properties interacting via the lens of virtual reality.
Either way, for long-time sci-fi fans and RoboCop enthusiasts – there’s good news. Will there be a new RoboCop? It seems the answer is a resounding yes! A brand new offering in the RoboCop cinematic universe has been announced by Amazon. The new film comes due to Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of the Hollywood studio MGM back in March 2022, with several titles marked and set aside for remakes, sequels, and more.
Prescient, Precognitive Hindsight?
Why didn’t RoboCop’s 2014 re-imagining get a sequel? There had originally been plans to pursue that film with a follow-up, but Sony Pictures Releasing canceled it due to the lack of interest in the remake. Since then, there has been talk of releasing a new reboot, which would be written as a direct sequel to the 1987 offering.
Due to recent mergers, however, there may be some good news for Officer Alex Murphy on the horizon! All of the series and new movies Amazon has announced to be in development come from the recent acquisition of MGM last year. After sifting through almost a full century of films and classic shows from the Hollywood studio, Amazon has decided to remake some classic titles, with one of the first undertakings in the works being the RoboCop franchise!
Tentatively titled RoboCop: Rogue City, the new RoboCop iteration would follow an unknown newcomer – apparently to be played by John Cena – called Marc Kyle. Kyle’s backstory will vary negligibly from the earlier RoboCop story, with Kyle being a soldier, whereas Peter Weller’s Alex Murphy was a police officer.
Similar to Murphy, however, Kyle will die in service and will be resurrected as a cyborg, with Murphy there as his mentor. This sounds very neat, but the core concepts feel a little close to Bloodshot (2020), which had nearly an identical storyline. If it weren’t for the comic series from Valiant that had existed decades earlier, many enthusiastic moviegoers saw Bloodshot as a soft RoboCop reboot!
Michael Miner and Ed Neumeier were the initial pensmiths who wrote the first flick. However, multiple issues eventually sank the project back in the ’80s. The two soon found themselves involved in the writer’s strike, and as a result, they were summarily dismissed from the assignment.
Eventually, comic book legend Frank Miller had been tapped, and he wrote what would become the actual sequel, RoboCop 2, directed by Irvin Kershner. However, Neumeier and Miner’s screenplay, initially titled RoboCop: The Corporate Wars, began picking up steam again around 2016, right when Donald Trump was about to be elected president.
A Decade Ago and Beyond
2014’s remake was a disappointment as a RoboCop film for two specific reasons: Alex keeps taking off his helmet after he becomes RoboCop, allowing him to live his life relatively normally as a human and reconnect with a family he’s supposed to have lost, which humanized him and therefore defeated the point of a hybridized cyborg stuck between the world of mankind and the ‘internet of things’ world of the machines.
Regardless of this oversight in the past, MGM has landed on a new director to helm their upcoming RoboCop sequel, which will serve as a direct sequel to Paul Verhoeven’s original film. Back in August, Neill Blomkamp disclosed that he had departed RoboCop Returns despite having already put in quite a bit of work on the undertaking.
Blomkamp desired to simulate director Paul Verhoeven’s technique for the sequel, wanting it to feel like it was only moments after the original film concluded. While RoboCop Returns never quite reached the big screen, a new RoboCop movie and TV series are currently in the works, with Prime Video holding the rights to the franchise.
