Nearly 40 years after Paul Verhoeven turned “RoboCop” into a bloody corporate satire, the franchise is heading back to television at a moment when its ideas about tech companies, privatized policing, and machines replacing people feel less like science fiction than the evening news. Prime Video has officially ordered eight episodes of the new series, with original co-creator and co-writer Ed Neumeier joining as an executive producer.
The official premise also offers a clearer idea of how the latest reboot will approach the material. A giant tech conglomerate convinces the city to place a powerful robot on its police force, with the machine implanted with the consciousness of a beloved fallen officer.
READ MORE: New ‘RoboCop’ Series At Amazon MGM Studios Moving Forward After Greenlight
As The Playlist reported in April, the series had already received a green light at Amazon MGM Studios, with Peter Ocko (“Lodge 49,” “Pushing Daisies”) attached to write and showrun and James Wan producing. Amazon has now formally announced the eight-episode order, confirmed the creative team, added Neumeier, and released the first official story details.
“RoboCop is a franchise that has meant something to audiences for nearly four decades—not just as an action spectacle, but as a sharp, provocative mirror of our relationship with technology and power,” Amazon’s head of global television, Peter Friedlander, said. “Peter Ocko has crafted a vision that honors the soul of what made the original so enduring while building something entirely fresh and urgent for today.”
Wan, Michael Clear, and Rob Hackett will executive produce through Blumhouse Atomic Monster. Danielle Bozzone will serve as a co-executive producer.
“I’ve been a massive fan of ‘RoboCop’ forever, so getting to help bring this world to television is a dream,” Wan said. “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 added that the creative team intends to honor the original while building “something unmistakably new for a global audience.”
Verhoeven’s 1987 film starred Peter Weller as Alex Murphy, a Detroit police officer murdered in the line of duty and reconstructed by Omni Consumer Products as a corporate-owned cyborg. Beneath the movie’s ultraviolent action was a viciously funny attack on privatization, consumer culture, corporate power, and Reagan-era America. The new series will have to find its own way into those ideas without sanding down the ugliness and absurdity that made the original endure.
The movie spawned “RoboCop 2” and “RoboCop 3,” along with animated shows, a 1994 live-action series, comics, and video games. A 2014 remake directed by José Padilha starred Joel Kinnaman as Murphy and earned $242.6 million worldwide, but never received a sequel.
Casting and production dates for the new series have not been announced. “RoboCop” will stream exclusively on Prime Video.
