On paper, Sony appeared to have checked all the right boxes in rebooting a classic franchise. It hired an up-and-coming star who probably didn't make the budget top-heavy, surrounded him with one of the most decorated supporting ensembles of the decade, and tried to follow the Christopher Nolan playbook by exploring grounded, contemporary themes. They even brought on board an exciting filmmaker who had experience tackling some overlapping ideas in his past work. However, the experiment didn't pan out, and the franchise came to a screeching halt immediately. It's about to be rebooted for streaming by Prime Video, but there will always be curiosity about where the 2010s version would've headed had things played out differently.
We're talking about the 2014 RoboCop reboot, headlined by Joel Kinnaman. Directed by José Padilha, the Brazilian filmmaker who introduced Wagner Moura to the world with his Elite Squad movies, RoboCop also featured Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael K. Williams, and Michael Keaton. The movie explored relevant themes of policing and surveillance, but its critical reception was mixed and its box-office performance was uninspiring. However, RoboCop continues to pop up on the streaming charts from time to time, and interest in revisiting it will only increase as Prime Video's reboot, starring Dan Stevens, gets closer.
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