Speaking with ComicBook about his new steel-plated gig, still in early pre-production, Stevens could only share his enduring appreciation for Verhoeven’s sharp-witted, wildly violent film, which he hopes this new series will emulate with a similar dollar-buying, squib-bursting elan. “Oh my god,” he said, “that original is one of my favorite films of all time. For me and so many of my friends, it was such an iconic movie; I think maybe one of [our] first exposures to extreme violence and also satire. I think that’s what I’m most looking forward to, hopefully preserving those elements.”
It’s worth noting that previous attempts to further the RoboCop brand have often resulted in toothless entries that sanitized both the satire of Verhoeven’s film and its zeal for wanton carnage. After a RoboCop animated series premiered in 1988, a more kid-friendly approach was taken with the groin-decimating hero cop in RoboCop 3, followed by the animated Alpha Commando in 1998 and two anodyne live-action TV series in 1994 and 2001. In 2014, José Padilha revived the franchise with Joel Kinnaman in a soft-serve PG-13 affair that waved its prime directives at the topical subject of drone warfare, but it remains memorable mostly for falling well short of the clever, vicious heights of the original.
That aside, it’s worthwhile to share Stevens’ enthusiasm for the new series, since it’s being run by folks who don’t shy away from the gnarly, smart stuff: James Wan’s Atomic Monster gave us the magnificently messy Malignant, after all, and it previously dabbled in the violent robot subgenre with M3GAN. Showrunner Peter Ocko’s previous series, the critically adored Lodge 49, while more big-hearted than one might expect a RoboCop series to be, has some Verhoeven embedded in it, with the show’s Omni Corp serving as a cute nod to the 1987 film. Maybe a thrilling, amusing, dare we say shocking synthesis of Stevens’ engrossingly strange performance work, Wan’s enthusiasm for horror, and Ocko’s mindful sensibilities will emerge in this new RoboCop? Until we have a trailer to look at, all we can do is ponder the permutations. As a wise robot cop once said, “We’re only human.”
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