New RoboCop suit revealed

And still it got beat out by The Lego Movie and About Last Night.

Personally I love that fact.  The original Robocop was an ass-kicking gory movie.  THis is a watered-down PG13 version and I love that it didn't do that great.

Most industry insiders were convinced Robocop would flop and they've been saying that since it was first announced several years ago.

Remakes of films tend to do just about the same business as the original film (adjusted for inflation), the original Robocop in 1987 had a $13 million budget and made $57 million at the box office (that's approximately $113 million now).   A cheap enough production cost at the time so it was considered a minor hit.  Knowing that I can't believe they green-lit a remake with such a high production cost, it makes no sense whatsoever.  If they could have produced the film for $40 million then I think it would turn a decent profit, but the history of the franchise doesn't warrant a $120 million gamble and probably an additional $80 million spent on advertising.

It will probably end up breaking even with the worldwide totals but the studio has to consider this a major disappointment considering the mediocre domestic box office which kills any chance of continuing the franchise (which is the only reason studios do remakes, to kick-start potential franchises).

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It will probably end up breaking even with the worldwide totals but the studio has to consider this a major disappointment considering the mediocre domestic box office which kills any chance of continuing the franchise (which is the only reason studios do remakes, to kick-start potential franchises).

 And that makes me smile.   

When I first heard about a PG13 remake I went back and watched the original.  It was such a pop culture hit at the time that I forgot how violent and gory it really was.

tohostudios wrote:

And that makes me smile.   

Well, I have a hard time "celebrating" flops because I have friends that work at a couple of these studios (a couple at Sony, one at Paramount) and the lay-offs have been hitting hard over the past couple years...whenever one of these big films flop hard they lay off more people.

But yeah, I'm glad they probably won't waste time doing a sequel.

I'm sorry to hear that but I'm so tired of the scourge of remakes/reboots/re-imaginings that I can't help but celebrate their failures.

But you're right; there are real people behind these types of movies who become collateral damage when they bomb.

That remake of About Last Night was damn smart from a business perspective, it has already more than doubled the production budget and should make a nice profit. The very low budget ($12 million) and a rising star (Kevin Hart) made that possible. I wouldn't be surprised to see several more of these 80s romantic comedies rebooted for black audiences. They're cheap as hell to produce and make good money...just like horror films.

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...just like horror films

Nooooooo!!!!!   Remake anything but horror films.  

When the PG13 remake of Re-animator comes out I will swear off new movies.

tohostudios wrote:

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...just like horror films

Nooooooo!!!!!   Remake anything but horror films.  

When the PG13 remake of Re-animator comes out I will swear off new movies.

That's not what I meant. Horror films in general are cheap to produce.

Yeah but remakes of horror films are even cheaper to make.

tohostudios wrote:

Yeah but remakes of horror films are even cheaper to make.

Sometimes. The remake of The Crazies (which I thought was excellent) was a significantly more expensive film than the original.

The cheapest horror films recently have been stuff like Insidious which cost $1.5 million to produce and made $97 million at the box office and The Purge which cost $3 million and made $89 million at the box office. I don't think they are very good but they are sound business. Most of these horror remakes cost a bit more; Friday The 13th ($20 million), My Bloody Valentine ($15 million), Nightmare On Elm Street ($35 million) for example.

Just remake films well! I personally thought that Robocop was a movie that had real potential but was screwed up by the heavy hand of Paul Verhoeven, it was ripe for a great remake, so was Judge Dredd and to an extent Total Recall, all of which got the 80's treatment first time round but could have been great.

Most remakes just flat out suck though with the prime offender being the offensive The Wicker Man

tohostudios wrote:

I'm sorry to hear that but I'm so tired of the scourge of remakes/reboots/re-imaginings that I can't help but celebrate their failures.

But you're right; there are real people behind these types of movies who become collateral damage when they bomb.

^ This..

There are so many instances in which the ideas just plain fail, too. I didn't see that 'Total Recall' remake and I'm a PKD fan and a fan of the first version which is a cheesy B-movie at heart. It shouldn't have been that difficult to rope me in but there was absolutely nothing interesting about the trailers.

The best thing is that movie only got a "12 years" rating in Germany. Usually PG-13 movies are "16 years" here. But Robocop is so lame, that it got the same rating as the Simpsons and Married with Children - and down a notch from South Park.
A far cry from the "Banned and Censored for 25 years!" original (It's free now, everybody 16 and above can buy it)

And after seeing it, i don't even know what to think. Robocop looks like your generic futuristic soldier, more fitting in Metal Gear Solid or Deus Ex and not this. Bad actors, mediocre CGI and neither the satire nor the impact the original had.

The new RoboCop will be available on DVD/Blu Ray in June according to Amazon.

"RoboCop 2014" is now out on DVD. I borrowed it from the library yesterday but didn't have a chance to watch it yet, will likely get to it over the weekend.

Fat Freddy wrote:

I just showed the trailer to my ten year old (who, when you think about it, is almost old enough to BE the target audience for this movie...which makes me feel very, very old. Haha). He's never seen the original but he knows that it's one of my all time favorites. He shrugged and said "It looks OK, but they're kinda ripping off Iron Man."

What's kind of strange is that while filming the original, Paul Verhoeven noticed a slight similarity between Iron Man and RoboCop. Believing the screenwriters may have used it as a source of inspiration, he decided to make an Iron Man comic book visible in the background as a "tip of the hat". He said something along the lines of "Iron Man wore a metallic suit in his quests for justice; so does RoboCop."

I read a lot of people who saw the original RoboCop as children, and it was their first R-rated movie in some cases. Maybe their parents or older relatives who may have been familiar with the Iron Man comics presumed it was something along those lines and let their kids watch it. The parents hadn't watched it themselves, and I am pretty sure they wouldn't have let them had they seen it first. So it inadvertently became their first R-rated movie, since the plot didn't sound like a hard R-rated movie to their parents.

New RoboCop movie in the works, to be directed by Neill ("District 9") Blomkamp.

This sez it'll be based on a sequel script that the writers of the original drafted years ago, but was never used.

The article doesn't specify whether this film will feature the "old school" RoboCop or the new-look 2014 version, but if they're going to connect it to the old series I imagine it would go with the original look.

https://deadline.com/2018/07/robocop-neill-blomkamp-directing-robocop-returns-justin-rhodes-ed-neumeier-michael-miner-mgm-1202424639/