Put the Final Draft down and back away. You're coming with me, creep.
There's some noise being made today about whether or not Sony wants a sequel to “Robocop,” the remake of Paul Verhoeven's 1987 classic, and I am getting hammered with e-mails and direct messages from people wanting to know how they can get in touch with Sony about what they want to do with the series.
After all, The Playlist ran the story under the headline “Sony Will Reportedly Hear Your Idea For A 'Robocop' Sequel,” despite no one having reported any such thing. If you follow their link back to the original story on Den Of Geek, what they're describing is basically a non-story. All they're saying is that the studio is not working on a sequel in any way right now, and they don't have any plans to start developing a sequel, either. If someone were to walk in to a meeting with Sony and they had a great idea and the right kind of passion, Sony might consider the idea of making a sequel, but even then, they'd have to think long and hard about the economics of it. This is true of most franchise material owned by studios. They may not be working on it right now, but the right idea from the right person might change their minds.
What bothers me about the Playlist headline is the way these things spread, and so many people already want a short-cut, something that will simply propel them to being an industry insider without any real work required, that it seems cruel to craft a headline as misleading as that one. It makes it sound like Sony's holding a Willy Wonka style event where anyone can walk in and pitch this sequel. Not true at all. The truth couldn't be further from that, actually.
There is another giveaway here that this news is not really news; MGM actually controls the material, and if my sources are right, there are other plans for the “Robocop” material. Here's hoping we hear some of those plans soon, but for now, you can file this as just another game of internet telephone where the message is all scrambled by this point.