RoboCop is Back With Brazilian Blood

After slowly emerging from bankruptcy under the leadership of Spyglass partners Roger Birnbaum and Gary Barber and converting it’s enormous debt of $4.25 billion into equity, MGM is now looking to be make it’s first major franchise play with a remake of an old cashcow: Robo Cop. Deadline is reporting the studio is in talks with Brazilian director Jose Padilha to revitalize the futuristic 1987 film originally directed by Paul Verhoeven that spawned two sequels, a variety of television adaptations, video games and a great deal of merchandising. Padilha is a filmmaker that appeals to the reconstituted MGM’s vision of playing on a global field and hope he will bring to the RoboCop franchise the same success he found with the Portuguese language film Elite Squad and it’s sequel Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within. Despite not finding huge numbers within North America, the original won a Golden Bear at the 2007 Berlinale and the sequel grossed more in Brazil than other blockbusters that year, including Avatar, Shrek Forever and Alice in Wonderland.

Gist: The original film centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg named RoboCop.

Worth Noting: Before MGM filed for Chapter 11 and halted progress on all it’s projects, recent Oscar-nominee Darren Aronofsky was on board to develop and direct the RoboCop reboot. No word on whether the David Self screenplay, which Aronofsky first discussed back in 2008, is still in play as the studio may hire a new writer to work under Padilha once he’s confirmed.

Do We Care?: Padilha is certainly an emerging South American filmmaker and there is little doubt as to whether he is capable of taut criminal dramas. His Emmy and Amnesty award winning film, Bus 174, which documented a botched robbery and a busload of passengers being taken hostage, was a powerful examination of a horrible event and even achieved the rare feat of a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But, a Robo Cop remake? The original was both satirical and exploitative: two elements we have yet to see in Padilha’s still small body of work.

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