Neill Blomkamp can’t seem to catch a break. After breaking onto the scene in a big way with his Oscar-nominated film “District 9,” the filmmaker was poised to be one of the next big things. After only moderate success with “Elysium” and “Chappie,” the filmmaker seemed to be ready to move into franchise work with “Alien 5.” Of course, that never happened, though Blomkamp worked on it for a while. He then moved onto “RoboCop Returns,” the spiritual successor to Paul Verhoeven’s classic 1987 film. But now, according to the director, he’s had to move on from that, as well.
Not waiting for some media outlet to get the first word, Blomkamp decided to update fans via his Twitter account, with a simple message that said that the director has left “RoboCop Returns” to work on a new horror film.
“Off Robocop. I am shooting new horror/thriller and MGM can’t wait/ need to shoot Robocop now. Excited to watch it in theaters with other fans,” he tweeted.
That’s not the most detailed explanation, but it would appear that the folks behind “RoboCop Returns” are not ready to film and Blomkamp isn’t willing to wait around any longer. We’ve seen this sort of thing happens all the time, so while it’s a bit sad for fans excited to see what the visionary director had in store for the classic sci-fi franchise, it appears that his version of ‘RoboCop’ will sit beside “Alien 5” as “What if?” projects.
As for where this leaves “RoboCop Returns,” we’ll have to wait and see. The film is expected to follow in the footsteps of recent films like the “Halloween” reboot and “Terminator: Dark Fate” by ignoring the other sequels and creating a new follow-up to the Verhoeven film. Obviously, there’s still excitement about the cyborg cop franchise, especially with this sort of idea, but it’ll be interesting to see where the production goes from here.
Blomkamp looks to be still pleased with the idea of the film, so maybe even without the director attached, fans shouldn’t despair. Now, let’s just see if Blomkamp can get this horror film in front of cameras anytime soon.
https://twitter.com/neillblomkamp/status/1161887748535439360?s=21
