Blomkamp wants Weller for “RoboCop Returns”

(FASTNEWS|COLOMBO) – Last month came word that “District 9” and “Chappie” filmmaker Neill Blomkamp will direct “RoboCop Returns,” a semi-reboot of the franchise that will serve as a direct sequel to Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 sci-fi classic.

The project marks another film in the recent trend of movies that effectively ignore non-celebrated sequels in favour of direct follow-ups. We get that with “Halloween” in October and the new “Terminator” next year. Those films also bring back the original stars of the franchise like Jamie Lee Curtis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton.

So it’s no surprise that when Blomkamp was asked on Twitter who should play the title character, he had only one response: Peter Weller.

The storyline of the new movie was previously said to be: “anarchy reigns and the fate of Detroit hangs in the balance as RoboCop makes his triumphant return to fight crime and corruption”. That suggests 71-year-old Weller’s return seems possible if the film is dealing with a Robocop that has been around for decades.

Original writers Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner are on board as producers with Justin Rhodes doing a re-write of their original “RoboCop 2” script which is very different to the actual “Robocop 2” we got.

Weller recently played the secondary villain of “Star Trek Into Darkness” and has appeared on both “Dexter” and “Longmire” in recent years.