Over the years, director Neill Blomkamp has been tied to a number of in-development projects with storied sci-fi film franchises, including Aliens, Halo, and RoboCop. In a new interview with JoBlo, Blomkamp touched on the latter, revealing that his sequel would have attempted to mirror Paul Verhoeven’s directing style.
"That’s the only film that I would have ever done where I would have tried to basically simulate Paul Verhoeven’s directing style,” the District 9 and Elysium director told JoBlo.
“I wanted it to feel like it was the day after. Like if Dick Jones fell out of the window on Monday, this would have been Tuesday. It was like literally the next morning that it began. So it was a direct sequel exactly in the same style.”
Blomkamp's sequel was tentatively titled RoboCop Returns and was said to be based on an unproduced spec script from the writers of the original 1987 RoboCop film, Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. His sequel/reboot would have ignored the events of RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3, as well as the 2014 remake that starred Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, and Michael Keaton.
RoboCop Returns was first announced in January 2018, with Blomkamp continuing its development until August 2019. At that point, he bowed out of the project in favor of filming a supernatural horror film titled, Demonic, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Abe Forsythe was selected to replace Blomkamp in November 2019.
However, since then, MGM was acquired by Amazon in March 2023, giving the streamer control of the RoboCop IP. Amazon subsequently announced plans for a RoboCop TV series and a new film- which is thought to be separate from what Blomkamp and Forsythe were developing.