Amazon has tapped horror aficionad James Wan as an executive producer on its RoboCop streaming series. The RoboCop franchise has experienced several attempts at a reboot, with the latest coming from Neill Blomkamp. While RoboCop Returns never got off the ground, there appears to be some movement on Prime Video’s version of RoboCop. According to to Variety, RoboCop has found a showrunner in Peter Ocko (Moonhaven), along with James Wan as an executive producer under his Atomic Monster company. Wan is known in horror circles for creating Saw, Insidious, and the Conjuring Universe, along with dabbling in the DC Universe for Aquaman and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
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RoboCop was among a group of projects that Amazon is looking to develop after its aquisition of MGM in 2022. At the time, it was reported that RoboCop, Stargate, Legally Blonde, Fame, Barbershop, The Magnificent Seven, Pink Panther and The Thomas Crown Affair were all under consideration. Decisions are being made on which projects will be movies or TV shows, with some possibly falling under both. RoboCop was one of the projects mentioned that could transition from a TV show to a movie.
Peter Ocko’s responsibilities on RoboCop include writer, executive producer, and showrunner. Other executive producers alongside Ocko and Wan include Michael Clear and Rob Hackett of Atomic Monster.
Neill Blomkamp teases details of abandoned RoboCop project
Back in 2018, Neill Blomkamp was tapped to develop a new RoboCop movie, which had the title RoboCop Returns, though it was only a year later that Blomkamp himself announced that he was no longer involved with the project.
“That’s the only film that I would have ever done where I would have tried to basically simulate Paul Verhoeven’s directing style,” Blomkamp shared with JoBlo back in August 2023. “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.”
The original 1987 movie focused on police officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) being mortally wounded in a not-too-distant-future Detroit, with a corporation then turning Murphy into the ruthless cyborg RoboCop. The movie inspired sequels, a TV show, and even an animated series. In 2014, Joel Kinnaman starred in a reboot of the concept, though its PG-13 rating resulted in a very toned-down version of the concept.
What is Amazon’s RoboCop series about?
The logline for RoboCop reads, “A giant tech conglomerate collaborates with the local police department to introduce a technologically advanced enforcer to combat rising crime — a police officer who’s part man, part machine.”
