Requiem for a ROBOCOP?

Posted by Matt Holmes. Last modified on July 9th, 2008 at 12:43pm

Buried, almost hidden away in that article from The Hollywood Reporter discussing the Red Dawn remake comes this quote which completely slipped me by but thankfully both AICN and /Film picked up on it…

Parent and MGM chairman and CEO Harry Sloan announced the “Red Dawn” remake — along with a big-budget rebuild of “RoboCop,” which director Darren Aronofsky among others has recently been in to discuss — in May at the Festival de Cannes.

Has Aronofsky been taking crack or is he hurt over the critics totally bashing his last movie The Fountain?

He is already doing a movie titled The Wrestler which we expected him to follow-up with a movie about a boxer titled The Fighter… and now he is eyeing a RoboCop remake? When did he go all mainstream on us?

You may remember at the turn of the Millennium, way before Christopher Nolan landed the Batman gig… a certain Darren Aronofsky had met with Warner Bros. and handed in his very different, dark and grim take of Batman which he adapted from Frank Miller’s Year One. It was a pretty obvious reaction to Batman & Robin - a movie so filled with McDonald’s colours that he went in a completely different direction and it was evidently rejected.

It was like when Batman Returns turned into Batman Forever. That kind of jolt… his Batman: Year One was way dark.

Since then he’s never come close to getting his hands on a franchise gig, that is until now it seems. Would he do the same for RoboCop which some of you may not know was a terrifically dark and controversial movie upon it’s debut in the late 80’s and was heavily edited down to avoid an R Rating.

Could we be in store for an artful Robocop translation?

At this point, we know the movie is going to happen… aren’t we more pleased to see Aronofsky behind it than a Michael Bay or Brett Ratner?

Categories: Movie News, Robocop, darren-aronofsky

4 Comments »

Aronofsky gone mainstream? The first Robocop film was definitely not mainstream. Sadly the sequels fell into that category, but the first one was ‘out there’ for its time. And you know, Aronofsky could well be the guy to do a successful reboot of Robocop, as Nolan has done with Batman.

And the Fountain, in my opinion, is a great piece of cinema.

Comment by Roars | July 9, 2008

Your right about the original but this remake will be a Summer tentpole all the way.

Comment by Matt Holmes | July 9, 2008

This is the only director I’d be even remotely interested in tackling a remake of Robocop.

@Matt: I know what you’re saying, but Batman Begins was also a “summer tentpole” movie, as is The Dark Knight. With a decent artist in charge of the production, a movie can be both an artistic and commercial success, and Aronofsky has a long history of doing what *he* wants. I don’t think he’ll sign up for this unless he really wants it.

Also, while The Wrestler seems like a relatively commercial concept, we really don’t know how Aronofsky’s handled it. There is definitely a lot of leeway for character development and style in that movie’s storyline - it could turn out like Raging Bull or Rocky 4 depending on how you treat the story, and I have the feeling that it’ll tend towards the former, and the script’s had decent buzz.

Comment by aphexbr | July 9, 2008

Don’t hold your breath. This is gonna happen about as much as “Year One” did.

Comment by SteveGrassel | July 10, 2008