Movies
Ed Neumeier Talks Neill Blomkamp’s ‘RoboCop Returns,’ a Direct Sequel to Paul Verhoeven’s Original Classic
Announced last year, Neill Blomkamp is set to direct a sequel to the original RoboCop for MGM, and what’s particularly interesting about the project is that the basis for it is a script that original RoboCop scribes Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner wrote back in the ’80s, which Blomkamp is currently rewriting alongside Justin Rhodes.
In RoboCop Returns…
Anarchy reigns and the fate of Detroit hangs in the balance as RoboCop makes his triumphant return to fight crime and corruption.
Chatting with HN Entertainment this week, Neumeier teased Blomkamp’s vision for the film.
“I am a producer at the moment,” Neumeier told the site. “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.”
He continued, “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.”
We do know that Blomkamp’s film aims to be bloody and most definitely rated “R,” and we’ve also heard that he wants Peter Weller back. Neumeier confirmed that in the chat.
“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,” he explained.
Filming is underway on The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man for Universal and Blumhouse, which will be howling its way into theaters on January 17, 2025.
Deadline reports that Matilda Firth (Disenchanted) is the latest actor to sign on, joining Christopher Abbott (Poor Things), Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel), and Sam Jaeger.
The project will mark Whannell’s second monster movie and fourth directing collaboration with Blumhouse Productions (The Invisible Man, Upgrade, Insidious: Chapter 3).
Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott as a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.
Writers include Whannell & Corbett Tuck as well as Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo.
Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers. Wolf Man is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.
In the wake of the failed Dark Universe, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has been the only real success story for the Universal Monsters brand, which has been struggling with recent box office flops including the comedic Renfield and period horror movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Giving him the keys to the castle once more seems like a wise idea, to say the least.
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