We’re super psyched about Neill Blomkamp’s upcoming RoboCop sequel, and it turns out we’re not the only ones. Ed Neumeier, the screenwriter behind the original RoboCop, is also involved in the new continuation, and he sounds like he’s completely on board with what Blomkamp has planned.
Neumeier revealed to HN Entertainment that the new film will be a tweaked version of his original sequel idea from 1988 that went unproduced, with Blomkamp and Justin Rhodes penning a new script that’s slightly different from Neumeier’s original sequel pitch:
“I am a producer at the moment. 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. 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 (RoboCop director Paul) 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.”
Neumeier also revealed some juicy details about the film’s planned casting. Specifically, that Blomkamp is still hoping to bring back Peter Weller in the role of RoboCop:
“As you know from the press that Neill Blomkamp wants to bring back 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 and what you realize is that 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, you know, Peter adds a lot to that.”
Finally, Neumeier nearly got into some spoilery territory when he shed the light on the sequel’s villains, and it seems like RoboCop will have a lot more to deal with than greedy businessmen and street toughs:
“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 somewhat as before, but, you know, the RoboCop thing for me was always exploring man’s relationship with technology, coping with technology.”
RoboCop vs an augmented human? As in, perhaps, the next stage of RoboCop evolution? I’d buy that for a dollar!
