Prime Video has announced the intention of reviving a number of IPs that it inherited from its purchase of MGM last year, including Legally Blonde, Stargate, Barbershop, and everyone's favorite cyborg lawman, RoboCop. It sounds promising, but we've been burned before.
1987’s RoboCop is a sci-fi classic, hands down. It showcases the best of director Paul Verhoeven's signature elements: over-the-top violence, blackly comic touches, and biting satire to deliver a memorable film that stands out from its peers. It would seemingly be something where sequels would practically write themselves: ass-kicking cyborg cop shooting up criminals. But without Verhoeven steering the ship, neither RoboCop 2 or RoboCop 3 could capture the same magic, nor could the 2014 reboot. For that matter, neither could the small screen: the franchise has been adapted for television four times to date, with another rumored one that has yet to see the light of day, if it does at all. So, ye creative heads of Amazon, heed well the lessons learned from these failed ventures.
RoboCop (1988, 12 Episodes)
The first attempt to bring RoboCop to TV made a number of changes in order to meet its intended target: Saturday morning cartoon-watching kids. Now why anyone would watch RoboCop and think, "You know who would love all this cursing and outrageous violence? Children!" is almost beyond belief. And with only 12 episodes of the cartoon made, it's clear that person may have been the only one that thought it to be a good idea. Guns are replaced by laser weapons, a byproduct of an Old Detroit that is more technologically advanced than the one on film. The red light in Alex Murphy/RoboCop's (Robert Bockstael) visor is stationary, and a number of characters in the series share a degree of variance from their film counterparts, including Clarence Boddicker (Len Carlson), who died in the film but is very much alive in the series.
RoboCop (1994, 22 Episodes)
Canada would take a crack at the franchise with RoboCop, a series set in a cyberpunk reality. The show aims for a higher age bracket than the 1988 animated series, but not by much: it is clearly made to appeal to children and teens. So, again, it doesn't share the graphic violence of its big brother. Instead, RoboCop (Richard Eden) is equipped with a number of non-lethal weapons, allowing for certain villains to be used in later episodes. Due to rights issues, many character names couldn't be used, so they are either altered, not used, or replaced by new characters, including the introduction of Diana (Andrea Roth), former OCP secretary and now the brain — literally, the brain — of the super-computer that runs the city and assists RoboCop.
RoboCop: Alpha Commando (1998-99, 40 Episodes)
A second attempt at an animated series, RoboCop: Alpha Commando, began its syndication run in September 1998. This series is set in 2030, five years after RoboCop (David Sobolov) was taken offline. Our hero is reactivated and is assigned to Alpha Division, a high-tech force created by the government to counter the terrorist organization DARC (Directorate for Anarchy, Revenge, and Chaos). A number of writers that worked on the OG animated series were utilized for Alpha Commando, but as far as elements shared with the films, this series is even further removed from them than the 1988 series is. The character arguably has more in common with Inspector Gadget than Verhoeven's RoboCop, accessorized with gadgets like roller skates and a parachute, among others.
RoboCop: Prime Directives (2001, 4 Episodes)
Out of all the attempts to make RoboCop succeed on the TV screen, RoboCop: Prime Directives comes closest to the dark satire and extreme violence of the first film. Prime Directives is actually a series of four feature-length episodes: Dark Justice, Meltdown, Resurrection, and Crash and Burn. The series takes place 10 years after the events of RoboCop, largely disregarding the happenings that occurred in both sequels and the previous live-action series. In a nutshell, Detroit is now Delta City, one of the safest places in the world, and RoboCop (Page Fletcher) no longer is as active as he had been. The first two episodes are primarily set around the conflict between Murphy and his former partner, John T. Cable (Maurice Dean Wint), who is now a cyborg himself after being killed by a hacked RoboCop. In a concurrent storyline, a near-bankrupt OCP is taken over by a scheming, murderous executive with plans to take over the entire city using artificial intelligence. The final two episodes follow RoboCop and his allies' attempts to stop the release of a biotech virus, created to wipe out computers and people by the mad Dr. David Kaydick (Geraint Wyn Davies). Prime Directives had potential, but its low-budget production was hard to overcome.
RoboCop Prequel Series (Announced 2020, TBD)
In September 2020, MGM announced that it was working on a RoboCop prequel TV series, a prequel that wouldn't feature the development of the RoboCop tech, Alex Murphy, or RoboCop. Instead, the prequel would see the evolution of OCP senior vice-president Dick Jones, played by Ronny Cox, from young executive to the villainous corporate head he becomes in the first film. It would also have shown the rise of Omni Consumer Products and how the corporate world has evolved from how we know it today. So Mad Men, only set in the RoboCop universe. Or Gotham without the early years of Batman's iconic gallery of villains. The idea gained little traction, and the little it did have was off the tails of the 2019 announcement of a new, direct sequel called RoboCop Returns.
To date, neither project has moved forward significantly, with RoboCop Returns occasionally resurfacing as still being in development, while the RoboCop-less RoboCop prequel series seems to have died outright. Amazon's intent to revive the franchise, with a TV series likely to be released first, joins the only other RoboCop-related project confirmed for release: a RoboCop: Rogue City, a video game, for June 2023. Unlike the attempts made to bring RoboCop to TV, the first-person shooter game has a tie-in to the franchise that legitimizes it as the heir apparent: the return of actor Peter Weller to reprise his role as Alex Murphy/RoboCop. The actor is performing voiceover work for the project, which is sure to please both video game devotees and fans of the original film, who have waited a long time for a return to its roots. Ultimately, it's that "return to its roots" that is most likely to determine the success of Amazon's work.