Neill. Neill! First, Neill Blomkamp saw his Alien sequel fall apart, leaving us with Ridley Scott’s exhausting Prometheus mythology. Now, the District 9 director has revealed he’s also bailing on his promising Robocop sequel. It was roughly a year ago that MGM revealed Blomkamp would helm a version of the sequel Robocop writers writers Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner originally wrote in the ‘80s. He even offered some enthusiastic updates back in June, saying the film would be like “watching Verhoeven do a follow up film.”
Last night, Blomkamp took to Twitter to say he was “off Robocop” due to his work on a “new horror/thriller” that apparently conflicts with MGM’s desire to get Robocop Returns. No announcement has been made as of yet about who will take the reins from the director.
That said, we remain intrigued by what this mysterious thriller might turn out to be, even if we weren’t crazy about Blomkamp’s Elysium or Chappie. If you’re in mourning, however, might be recommend the X-rated version of Robocop? Or the oddly moving theme song for its Game Boy adaptation?
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Robocop the Fried Chicken salesman was going to get another movie?
‘What are your prime directives?’‘Serve the public trust. Protect the innocent. Uphold the law. Serve the most tender, crunchy fried chicken in Detroit.’
Amazing piece of information. My life is downgraded to following pieces of pop “culture” trivia, void of any significance or meaning.
Sounds like Blomkamp had to… drop it.
They gave him 20 seconds to comply
MGM thanked him for his cooperation.
MGM fired him, at which point he was no longer protected by Directive 4 and was summarily executed.
This new horror/thriller, it’s a 30-years-later remake of I Come in Peace, isn’t it?
I had the Robocop C64 game as a kid and one level seemed impossible to finish before the time ran out. In recent years I discovered that they actually designed it this way, because a bug in the next level made the game unplayable. They didn’t have time to fix it before the release deadline, so just reduced the time limit on the earlier level to make it impossible, ensuring no one would ever discover the bug.So there’s a history of rushing out Robocop products, Robocop Returns is just the latest.
Maybe this: https://ew.com/books/2018/01/29/district-9-director-neill-blomkamp-and-tom-sweterlitsch-the-gone-world/
Neil Blomkamp unable to finish a project? Shocking! District 9 looks more and more like the exception, not the rule.
Based on his track record, nothing Blomkamp works on should be called “promising”.
Okay, how long before this horror/thriller thing falls apart? Two weeks? Three?
As soon as he finds out that either he can’t film it in Johannesburg or that the producers want to change the third act because “The whole ‘guy getting turned into an alien/robot/different kind of robot’ thing is getting stale”
It will go straight-to-Netflix in 2022.
Has there ever been a writer-director that started off as strongly as Blomkamp did then fell down so hard in all his subsequent films?Imagine James Cameron turning out Aliens and then morphing into John Badham for the rest of his career. Weird.
I’m not sure I’d buy his career for a dollar at this point.
I know Drive is divisive now but it was very well received, with Oscar buzz for Albert Brooks and even Ron Perlman. Then Winding Refn just disapeared completely up his own ass.
He only directed Drive. More importantly, he did write and direct both Valhalla Rising and Bronson, two earlier movies of his, both of which are awesome, so he seems pretty disqualified.
He wrote and directed Only God Forgives and Neon Demon after Drive, homie.
I’m not understading the point you’re trying to make here.
“He only directed Drive,” threw me off, tbh. Misread it as someone else defending his track record… I was like, “uhh… he did some really bad stuff after Drive, too.” Ignore me.
Refn made the TV show Too Old to Die Young. It’s very, very slow, and very lacking in dialogue and action. Of course.
Refn had directed seven film before Drive, most of them critically acclaimed. So this comparison doesn’t work.Also, I get where you’re going with this, but Refn was never meant to be a mainstream artist. The reason why you call Drive “divisive” is because all of it’s arthouse and grindhouse influences are all there on the screen. I think a lot of the viewers were expecting a smaller Fast & the Furious with Ryan Gosling.
Yeah I loved it though. What do you think happened? Ive heard great things about Bronson, but the rest have not done great, not even in the indie circuit.
I think Refn was never meant to be an indie darling. His main influences seem to be firmly in exploitation cinema wich doesn’t fly with most critics.I’ve loved them all so far, but I understand why hate what he does.
I was wondering whose career suffered the most from early expectations: his, or M Night Shyamalan’s.
One thing I’m curious about: Do these guys still get paid for working on said projects?
Can I have that job?
One thing I’m curious about: Do these guys still get paid for working on said projects?
Probably it depends on the deal, but usually I would think they must. Although – Letterman once asked an actor (maybe Harrison Ford) who was getting big paychecks per movie: “Do you just get a check? Are you SURE you’re getting paid?” which I thought was funny. I mean, I don’t think Harrison Ford really has to balance his checkbook or handle money at all if he doesn’t want to.
Neil Marshall comes to mind also. Apparently after The Descent, nothing else was decent.
M Night Shyamalan is a decent parallel, for those of us who didn’t think Chappie and Elysium were awful.
I’ll happily defend some parts of Chappie, and Elysium was…not horrible. But those views are not widely shared.
The Chappie trailer looked terrible and the title was worse, so I have no opinion. But Elysium was fine. Not great, but not offensive.
John Badham was better than Chappie and Elysium.
John ‘Wargames’ Badham? Sure.John ‘Drop Zone’ Badham? Not so much.
Drop Zone is GOD AWFUL. But still better than Chappie or Elysium. Brother’s Keeper and Another Stakeout? You may have a point there.
think he is not hip enough. There are some directors butching franchises like star wars, transformers, many (not all( DCU and to less extend some MCU movies. But they still get to make money.If you want to make a 1980’s action/sci fi movie like alien, terminator, robocop etc he would be perfect for those. But nope they go for Jar Jar etc.
Richard Kelly springs to mind. Though he never had the commercial success Blomkamp started with.
Eh….
I think it was Hitchock or Olson Welles who once said that an all-time classic movie is ‘three excellent scenes and no bad ones’, and much in that vein I would describe an all-time classic director’s career as “three excellent films and more mediocre than bad ones”.
Blomkamp is very much a strong technical/practical director who’s only as good as the screenplay he’s given – a modern day Ridley Scott if you will. By this point he’s clearly not cut out for writing his own scripts, but dude literally has a 30-40 year career ahead of him, give him some time.
I mean, he’s only done 3 movies. I don’t think he fell hard. Yea, Elysium wasn’t the best and I know Chappie had issues, but both were solid, enjoyable movies. Its not like he did District 9 then put out Sharknado 5 & Independence Day: Resurgence. Give the man some credit..
It’s very common in music for an artist to put out a killer debut album and then fail to follow it up. I guess it’s not surprising that the same can happen with directors.
There’s clear blame to spread around for his other “almosts” over the last few years, but between this sort of thing and his generally shitty follow-ups to District 9, his cache in Hollywood certainly isn’t holding up (and I’m having trouble bringing myself to care). But I will NEVER forget how blown away I was by District 9. It’s a really wonderful film and I hope he can do something of that quality again.
So the decline in the years following District 9 is pretty self-inflicted then?
The decline in the quality of his movies? I have to put that on him. The decline in output? Hard to say, but some of it is, yes. The Alien stuff was probably never more than a dream to him, although I’m sure he lobbied hard and wanted it to happen, but I’d put that mostly down to Ridley Scott and the studio not wanting to cross him. I’d lean towards most of this stuff being out of his control, but I just worry he’s going to get a reputation that discourages risk-averse studios to take a chance on him.
I think Blomkamp is his worst ennemy. He’s a terrible writer with great ideas who should work with others instead of doing it all himself.
Agreed. I remember leaving the theater feeling so excited about what I just saw. I don’t get that feeling too often.
This is pretty weird, for a few reasons.First, it’s weird that MGM wasn’t already aware of this other project when it hired Blomkamp, and hadn’t cleared his availability for the shooting schedule.Second, it’s weird that Blomkamp’s time commitment to what is presumably some indie horror movie with a micro budget is so profound that some other director could come in cold and be ready to start sooner than he would have been. It seemed like Blomkamp was already pretty deep into his planning for the movie. Third, it’s weird that Blomkamp would prioritize this horror thriller over ROBOCOP. District 9 was quite good, but his subsequent movies have bombed (Chappie was downright awful), and it’s not every day you get handed the keys to a beloved blockbuster franchise.Maybe it really is as simple as his tweet, but it smells fishy to me.
They wanted him to shave his mustache to direct RoboCop, but MGM insisted he keep it for their project.
I heard he put on fifty pounds for the role of directing Robocop, now that’s commitment.
“I went completely method. I researched what it is a director does on a movie, and then, the entire film while I was directing, that’s what I did.”
“First, it’s weird that MGM wasn’t already aware of this other project when it hired Blomkamp, and hadn’t cleared his availability for the shooting schedule.”
That’s only weird if you know nothing about how Hollywood works. “Second, … Third,”
Seems pretty clear that MGM wants to rush the Robocop movie and he’s not ready to shoot it. Again, if you know anything at all about how Hollywood works, this is not weird at all.
Chappie certainly didn’t enjoy mainstream success but it’s considered a cult classic in certain circles.
I think in the same way that The Room is a cult classic. It’s “good bad” in the lingo of The Flophouse Podcast, but it’s still bad.
You lie!
Its likely a cover story. They didn’t want him, but he had this other thing on a backburner, so to save face, we get this version.
I’m always suspicious of the initial reasons given. The number of times I’ve read “scheduling conflicts” at first, only for six months later to start hearing, “The script was so bad one of our elderly producers died just from reading the first page.”
It does sound fishy. Guy desperately needs a hit, but chose God-knows-what over a career boosting project. Either he made the wrongest choice, or MGM fired him over something big but embarrassing.
I would’ve loved to see a Blomkamp Robocop flick that I didn’t know was in the works and dashed until i read this just now.I also wanted to see his version of the Aliens universe but that crapped out too.
And that also crapped out for reasons that, in hindsight, seemed like a very clear “Duh”.
Is Blomkamp’s job just about scaring the old creators of franchises into coming out of retirement?
What was the reasoning for the aliens thingy not working out?I really like his style of movies, Elysium could’ve been better, but it had a good plot. Chappie was good too IMO.
Ridley Scott and Fox put the kibosh on it when they decided Prometeus’ sequel would be an Alien film proper, and not part of a spin-off series.
Ahhh ok, which ended up being Alien Covenant, right?I thought the reason was gonna be some odd plot or something
Correct. In this case, the answer is simple, mundane marketing.
Yikes. Blomkamp is turning into the Lauryn Hill of directors… always arriving late, always leaving early, half-baked old-new ideas, never completing shit and living off old hits. Give Robocop Returns to The Spierig Brothers (Predestination) instead of this dude. Hell, give it to Robert Rodriguez! The dude always over-delivers.
The headline should probably read:“Neill Blomkamp leaves Robocop Remake because the studio wants one thing but Neill wanted another. And his track record has been shit so the studios, for once, are in the right.”
He seems to have a habit of leaving projects people want to see him complete to go on to release projects people have little interest in.
Maybe it’s time to circle back to Darren Aronofsky, who was attached to the Robocop remake at one point. He could use a crowd pleaser after Mother!
Get Verhoven or go home!
Maybe we should just stop trying to make new RoboCop movies. I don’t know, I just don’t think a story where a broken justice system exists in thrall to an amoral corporate America will resonate with modern audiences.
Blomkampf is like Del Toro in announcing projects, except not nearly as well-loved or acclaimed or successful.
So Blomkamp is taking the Guillermo Del Toro approach to movie making…