Rebooting Robocop as an origin story seemed like a terrible idea, but then MGM hired the director of the pants-poopingly awesome Elite Squad 2 (Jose Padilha) to direct, and suddenly it like only a mildly terrible idea. (Pants Poopingly is Benedict Cumberbatch’s cousin, by the way).  This week, they hired Gran Torino writer Nick Schenk to work on the script. Which is, uh… good?

“DROP IT, GOOK.”

MGM has hired Gran Torino screenwriter Nick Schenk to work on the screenplay for RoboCop.
The CAA-repped Schenk had been working with Padilha, who co-wrote and directed Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, on the action thriller Tri-Border. The writer also has the original drama The Judge set up at Warner Bros. with Team Downey producing. [THR]

They say he was hired to “work on” the screenplay, but as far as I can tell, there hasn’t been another writer since David Self when Darren Aronofsky was still attached, so I’m assuming this script will be totally new. As far as Gran Torino, it was such a mixed bag of a movie, it’s hard to know whether it was only good because Eastwood called people “gook” 12 million times, or if it would’ve been ten times better if only old-man Eastwood would’ve let the first-time actor Hmong kids he hired off the street do more than one rehearsal take before he broke for dinner at 3:30 pm.

FUN FACT: This is neither here nor there, but Schenk holds a previous writing credit on a DVD called “The Best of Dr. Sphincter.”

MGM rebooting Robocop sounded like a pretty terrible idea until they got José Padilha onboard to direct, and then it sounded awesome, because he directed Elite Squad 2 (now called Elite Squad: The Enemy Within), which opens in the US this Friday. Not to get hyperbolic, but that movie melted my face off and kicked my balls in. Now, for better or worse, everything I hear about Robocop is colored with the idea that it’s probably going to be mega-kickass. ComingSoon recently sat down with Padilha, who explained his take on the film, and it sounds basically like an origin story.

“‘RoboCop’ the first movie was fantastic,” he told us. “But even if there was no movie, the concept of ‘RoboCop’ is brilliant, first because it lends itself to a lot of social criticism, but also because it poses a question, ‘When do you lose you humanity?’ The way it does that is by replacing body parts with machine parts, and that’s very smart because guess what? It’s going to happen!”
“I have my take on it,” he continued, “And I can tell you this: In the first ‘RoboCop’ when Alex Murphy is shot, gunned down, then you see some hospitals and stuff and then you cut to him as RoboCop. My movie is between those two cuts. How do you make RoboCop? How do you slowly bring a guy to be a robot? How do you actually take humanity out of someone and how do you program a brain, so to speak, and how does that affect an individual?”

Normally I’d say that sounds like a terrible idea, because from what I understand, Robocop doesn’t shoot any drug dealers in the face between those two cuts. I’ll be honest, that was a big part of his appeal. I wasn’t interested in his humanity so much as his propensity to shoot people in the face (the fact that he could load bullets from his arm into the gun was a close second). And yet, Elite Squad 2 had an almost too-perfect amount drug dealers getting shot in the face. So you have to figure, if anyone can figure out how to work that in, it’s Padilha.

Oh, he also says the new Robocop is going to be an American.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the trailer for Act of Valor, from 300 and Man of Steel co-writer Kurt Vonstad and directors Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh. It’s a Navy SEAL movie, but the twist is that it stars actual active-duty SEALs (don’t they have to be undercover or something?). It looks like a 90-minute military recruitment video, albeit a really pretty one. I just don’t understand why all military recruitment stuff has to have such crappy music. “Yasseaah, I’m a-emo underbite singin’ ’bout duty…”

Universal drops plan to release Tower Heist early on VOD. No joke, this plan involved offering Tower Heist on VOD for $60 three weeks after its theatrical opening, and it was only dropped when theater chains threatened not to show the movie.  I think the FBI should revive the plan, because anyone who’d pay $60 to watch a Brett Ratner movie should be on the watch list. |Variety|

Ben Stiller to star in Rentaghost. From the writers of Night at the Museum, “Stiller will play Fred Mumford, a fellow who, though a slacker in life, has become determined to make something of himself as a newly deceased ghost. He winds up setting up a afterlife temp service, getting ghosts to rent themselves out for use by the living.”  Hey, ghost, can you wank dismissively for me? Thanks. |ComingSoon|

Don Johnson in Tarantino’s Django Unchained. No word yet on what part he’ll play. I actually heard about this last week from a friend but didn’t post it because it was a secondhand rumor and I couldn’t confirm. That was stupid of me, clearly. I also heard he was talking about banging hookers with Costner on the set of Tin Cup, but that’s between you and me.|Variety|

New photo from the set of American Reunion (trailer hits tomorrow). Chris Klein wants to score coke so bad. “I. Am. Gonna. Walk. Through. The rain drops.” |via USA Today|

Read the rest of this entry »

My favorite film of Sundance was Brazilian director José Padilha’s Elite Squad 2, which I called, in a not-at-all hyperbolic review, a two-hour Brazilian The Wire on steroids.  As soon as the credits rolled, I figured Hollywood would be trying to give Padilha a jillion dollars to direct their next action remake/prequel/sequel/reboot, and even asked him as much during the Q & A (I’ve included a transcript and audio of the actual exchange below). Today, the Hollywood Reporter says Padilha’s the lead candidate to direct a remake of Robocop for MGM. My God, you guys, do you know what this means?  I just TOLDJA’d the entire internet.

Jose Padilha, the Brazilian director behind the gritty South American Elite Squad movies, is in talks to direct Robocop, the film project which is the reconstituted MGM’s top priority. The studio was meeting with directors last week — others on the list included Robert Rodriguez [*mouth wank*] and David Slade [*fart shrug*] – with Padilha emerging a top cop.
The new MGM is looking to make three pictures to start, two in the $30 million range and one in the $80 million range. Robocop has the latter slot. MGM is also zeroing on writers to pen a new script.
[THR]

Hiring Padilha means at least MGM has taste, and I can’t imagine anyone being able to make a more badass Robocop than this guy, especially if his heart’s in it.  And according to Padilha, he’s not looking for paycheck movies.  This was our exchange at Sundance:

ME: Are you going to continue making awesome movies like [Elite Squad 2] or are you going to take a really big paycheck to make Pirates of the Caribbean 7 or something?

PADILHA: Well let me address this: believe me, you can take a big paycheck out of a movie like this.  This movie is totally independent in a very broad sense, because it was produced by us. And Wagner [lead actor Wagner Moura], who is sitting here with us, is actually one of the producers of the film.  The Screenwriter is a producer.  The people that made the first movie, we got together, and we said let’s make a sequel, but let’s keep it.  So we opened a distribution company with six people in it.  Six people calling theaters, and sending the prints and everything, and it got us a lot of money, so… Not looking for paychecks.

Incidentally, Elite Squad 2 went on to become the highest-grossing Brazilian movie of all time and outgrossed Avatar there. I’m inclined to believe that Padilha wasn’t looking for a big paycheck because I’m trusting like that, but it looks like he found one anyway.  But if as few f*cks are given during the making of Robocop as were given during Elite Squad 2, I will be happy.  And no doubt, so will you.  Friends, trust me when I say that very few f*cks were given during the making of Elite Squad 2.  VERY few f*cks.

Read the rest of this entry »

I09 recently caught up with San Francisco businessman Pete Hottelet, who donated $25,000 towards the Detroit Robocop statue and owns a company named after the fictional company in Robocop which makes movie-related tchotchkes. If you can believe it, Pete isn’t exactly media shy, and he offered updates on the project as well as the picture of the models above.

One of Hottelet’s key points is that the statue already has a privately-owned location in mind (the Imagination Station) if all else falls through, and it has the statue rights all worked out.  “It’s going to happen,” he assures multiple times.

What will the statue look like?

Fred Barton Productions has generously offered access to an extremely accurate restoration of the Robocop suit from the first movie. His artist has been working on it for the last five years. That’s right: five years! It even includes suit detail that was never shown on screen (like the plug and vents in the left rear of the torso).[...]

The pose will likely be a pose similar to this image (right):

The primary objectives will be to make sure the statue is of the highest quality possible, and has the greatest longevity. So to those ends, bronze is a good choice because it’s extremely durable in an outdoor setting.

Gun or no gun?

Again, going back to the reasoning along the same lines as the Superman statue. Superman has deadly heat vision, and he uses it when necessary, but the concepts and ideals that he stands for are not irrevocably tied to the use of deadly force.

Uhhhh, yes they are.  Look, hippie, it’s Robocop.  The “ideals he stands for” are being made of metal and shooting people, this ain’t a Rosa Parks statue.

Read the rest of this entry »