Genre fans have made it through the days of seeing most of our favorite movies being remade, and now we've entered an age that I am really enjoying watching play out. A time when franchises push aside the recent remakes and reconnect to the original films. It happened when TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D went back to the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (in its own strange way), it happened with last year's HALLOWEEN, it's happening with the GHOSTBUSTERS movie Jason Reitman is getting ready to direct… And it's happening with RoboCop.
Although a ROBOCOP remake was released in 2014, director Neill Blomkamp is working on a film called ROBOCOP RETURNS, which will serve as a direct sequel to the 1987 ROBOCOP and is based on a sequel script ROBOCOP screenwriters Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner started working on right after the first movie was released.
It has been six months since ROBOCOP RETURNS was first announced, so I think it's about time we hear an update on this project. Thankfully, Neumeier, who is also producing the new film, provided one to HN Entertainment.
Neill Blomkamp and his screenwriter Justin Rhodes have done a pass on the script we were writing on and they’re doing another one. It is a slightly different concept in some ways than we were originally doing … I think Neill really really wants to make a good RoboCop movie. His idea is that it should be the proper Verhoeven… if (Paul Verhoeven) had directed a movie right after RoboCop I think that’s what he is trying to achieve and I hope he does."
Neumeier couldn't give many details on what they have in the works, but HN did manage to get him to comment on the story's villains:
…we had some ideas about, shall we say, 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."
We recently heard a rumor that original ROBOCOP star Peter Weller isn't interested in coming back for ROBOCOP RETURNS, which is disappointing but also makes sense. Weller is in his 70s now, so I could totally understand if he doesn't want to mess around with any of the costume or prosthetic issues involved with playing RoboCop. Blomkamp and Neumeier aren't giving up hope, though. They both want Weller in RETURNS.
Neill Blomkamp wants to bring Peter Weller back, and what you get when you do that, if you use the DNA of the old property in the new, is that you get something that shares continuity and fans can embrace the brand, it’s not too different. … When I was sitting and writing 30 years later, rewriting, the second draft of our sequel to RoboCop, which was called The Corporate Wars at the time and is now called RoboCop Returns, I kept hearing Peter's voice."
We'll keep you updated on ROBOCOP RETURNS as Blomkamp and his collaborators continue to chip away at it.
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