Neill Blomkamp is set to direct a ret-conned sequel to an ’80s sci-fi classic—though not the one he intended. After years of talking up his kaput plans for a direct Aliens sequel, now he’s reportedly signed on to instead do a direct sequel to RoboCop. Like with his previous would-be sequel, the plan here is to take a selective memory approach, forgetting all the follow-ups that took the franchise off its rails. For Alien, that meant everything after Aliens, and for RoboCop, well, it’s everything after the original 1987 RoboCop.
Original writers Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner have already written a script, but that’s being re-written by Justin Rhodes—the writer who, aptly enough, just cut his “forget all the shitty sequels to this well-armed metal man series” teeth on the script for Paramount’s direct sequel to Terminator 2. Blomkamp is just as much a nail-on-the-head choice: didn’t he already make a movie about the robotic law enforcement of the dystopian future? And didn’t we already try to reboot RoboCop?
When will they finally learn to just drop it?
