Ask any sci-fi fan worth their salt and they’ll tell you that a RoboCop movie directed by genre veteran Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) is the stuff of dreams.
Turns out the Powers That Be over at MGM are in the process of making that dream a reality, with RoboCop Returns locked in as the working title. Oh, and it’ll presumably be rated R, so it’s small wonder why Blomkamp’s latest gig is beginning to turn heads and raise eyebrows.
It’s still a ways away, of course, but during a recent interview with HN Entertainment (h/t ComicBook.com), Ed Neumeier, one of the scribes responsible for the original RoboCop movie of ’87, offered a brief status report on the planned sequel. Essentially, RoboCop Returns rose from the ashes of a “very rough sequel” that began life in 1988. Now, more than 30 years later, it’s about to see the warm light of day.
“We talked about it a couple of years back and I reminded [MGM] that we had written a very rough sequel back in 1988 which then was stopped by the writer’s strike, the same year. And they looked at it and they said ‘Oh, good!’, so we did some more work on that and then Neill Blomkamp found out about it and he said, ‘I have always wanted to do this, this is my dream project’ and MGM was very very pleased to get into business with him.”
Remaining true to the original is of the utmost importance to Neumeier, who wrote the initial treatment for RoboCop Returns alongside Michael Miner. Since then, Blomkamp and screenwriter Justin Rhodes have polished the script, so it shouldn’t be too long before the wheels are in motion and Detroit’s fearless law enforcer is back on the streets.
“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 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… 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.”
RoboCop Returns is yet to commit to a production start date, but we’ll update you if and when that changes.
