Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987) is headed for another reboot, but MGM is hoping to avoid the problems of the humorless and PG-13 Sony reboot from 2014 by bringing aboard Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Chappie) and original RoboCop co-creators Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner along with screenwriter Justin Rhodes (Terminator), working from the original script for the RoboCop sequel they never got to make in the ’80s. The script that was supposed to be the RoboCop sequel — RoboCop 2: The Corporate Wars — was held up by a writers’ strike in 1988 and ultimately replaced with a different finished script, and now Blomkamp’s RoboCop Returns will be picking up that story.
Neumeier has previously described the reboot as “old school” and a continuation of 1987’s RoboCop. Now Neumeier has reveals more details about the reboot (or should we call it a direct sequel?) in an interview with HN Entertainment.
“[Blomkamp’s] idea is that it should be the proper [Paul] Verhoeven if Verhoeven had directed a movie right after RoboCop,” Neumeier explained. He also gave a big hint about what direction they’re going with the villains. “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,” he said.
Neumeier went on to talk about how much Neill Blomkamp wants to bring back Peter Weller, which has already been widely reported, but we aren’t so sure Weller will be interested, nor are we sure which role he’d play. Would he be the villainous head of a corporation? Would he be the other main villain, the one with cybernetic augmentations? Because we’d definitely watch an evil Weller-bot give us a lecture about Italian Renaissance Art History, right before RoboCop goes all Caravaggio on his ass. Just don’t make it PG-13, please?
(Via HN Entertainment and CBM)