RoboCop is being rebooted as a TV series — could it actually be good?
There’s no piece of IP Hollywood won’t exploit, and that certainly extends to RoboCop. But is there a version of this that could be better than the original?
Hollywood might be celebrating an era of original storytelling (Widow’s Bay! Obsession!) but there is clearly still great appetite in the executive suites for intellectual property.
When Amazon bought MGM in 2022, it said it was keen to exploit the acquired studio’s library of franchises and known brands, and one of them was RoboCop.
It’s taken four years, but that promised (or should that be threatened) RoboCop TV series is actually happening.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The official greenlight was been confirmed, with writer Peter Ocko (Lodge 49, Elementary, The Office US) set to be showrunner and Australian horror master James Wan on board as executive producer.
The RoboCop franchise started with the 1987 film starring Peter Weller as Alex Murphy, a police officer who is murdered by a criminal gang and then has his corpse melded with a robot as part of a program by a dodgy corporation now in charge of a privatised police force.
The film is a favourite among many, and is considered an action classic of the 1980s, although director Paul Verhoeven’s (Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct, Showgirls) maximalist, often schlocky style isn’t for everyone.
What is not in dispute is the original film’s commentary about Reagan-era pro-corporate, trickle-down economics, and the increasing intrusion of private companies in public services.
“What Paul Verhoeven created in 1987 was decades ahead of its time, and its questions about technology, identity, and who corporations really serve have only grown more urgent,” Wan said.
He added that this new version would be relevant in this “modern, tech-driven world”.
If RoboCop could do that, and honour the strength of the original film’s criticism of corporate greed and corruption, and or have honest conversations about the human element of cybernetics, automation and even body-hacking in the age of AI, and the role of policing, and not be quite so stylistically divisive, then it could have value.
But that’s a big if. Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, it is clearly in favour of corporate neoliberalism, and while in the past, that hasn’t necessarily gotten in the way of its shows having an opposing perspective (eg. The Boys), there are hints it won’t always separate art from its profit interest.
Recently, Amazon dumped one of its nearly-finished films, Artificial, from release, practically giving it away to another distributor. All it said was that it didn’t think it was the ideal release partner for this particular movie, but not the why.
What was unspoken was the glaring conflict of interest – Artificial is said to be an unflattering portrait of OpenAI boss Sam Altman, and after the film was put into production, Amazon invested $US50 billion in OpenAI.
Since Verhoeven’s original film, RoboCop has morphed into a franchise, even if most of the sequels, spin-offs and tie-ins have been derided or largely forgotten.
It spawned two sequels, one in 1990 and another in 1993, that don’t make most fans’ rewatch lists, and a 2014 reboot starring Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman and Michael Keaton.
There have also been two animated and two live-action TV shows, six video games and several comic book runs.
