‘ROBOCOP’ REMAKE PUSHED BACK TO FEBRUARY 2014
Sony may have realized that they have a major disaster on their hands in director Jose Padilha’s Robocop reboot, because they’ve removed it from its prime early August 2013 slot, and shuffled it off to February, where box-office grosses go to die. Hollywood studios generally have two periods where they dump the pictures that they find problematic, or just outright know are complete turdbombs and won’t make any money during more competitive release window – Late August to mid October is one, and January to mid March is another. So, the fact that Sony is booting the film out of the summer blockbuster season into mid-winter is a sure sign that the reboot of Paul Verhoeven’s satirical, ultra-violent 80′s classic is in serious trouble.
It also doesn’t help that this production has been met with negative publicity and critical reaction from the very beginning. The project lost its villain early on when Hugh Laurie dropped out (replaced by Michael Keaton); Padilha has reportedly been going through “hell” - fighting the studio over creative decisions for months; and most recently, bloggers and online journalists ripped the set photos of the newly redesigned Robocop suit to shreds, calling it bland, derivative, unimaginative, and simply laughable.
Look, I realize the Internet shits out thousands of “Hollywood is bereft of original ideas, remakes and reboots suck, and they need to stop and robble robble” articles per hour – and I hate to add to that already old and moldy pile – but dammit, if this Robocop release shift isn’t just further proof that that sentiment is more widespread than ever, than I don’t know what is. This shit really needs to stop. We’ve seen now that original films like Looper and The Master can find an audience; one that’s at least equal to crappy remakes like last August’s Total Recall. Perhaps Sony took a look at how movie audiences avoided that remake like it had open, oozing sores back in August, and realized that maybe…just maybe, counting on yet another 80′s sci-fi re-tread for summer blockbuster dollars isn’t the greatest idea in the world.
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