A story about the passion of Executive Producer John Davison, the unsung hero who led RoboCop to great success.

"RoboCop" synopsis

A near-future Detroit filled with crime and ambition. After a failed experiment with a security robot, Omni proposes a cyborg police officer that uses the human brain. Murphy, a new police officer killed in the line of duty, is brought back to life as RoboCop, who has a human brain and a body made of titanium alloy. RoboCop shows off his overwhelming power, but gradually Murphy's memories, which were supposed to have been erased, come back to life...

Index

• Without “Blade Runner”, “RoboCop” would not have been created!?
• The budget doubled due to the success of ``The Terminator''!
• Staff brought together by producer John Davison's passion
• Born from Marvel Comics and Japanese special effects heroes

Without “Blade Runner”, “RoboCop” would not have been created!?

"RoboCop" was released in the United States in June 1987. The soundtrack by Basil Poledouris, who composed the famous "RoboCop March" that you may have heard somewhere even if you haven't seen the movie, was not available in time for the trailer production, and Orion, the same distributor as " The Terminator " (1984),・Pictures borrows a song by Brad Fiedel. In an unprecedented event, it was used in the trailer for RoboCop . In the trailer, a long The Terminator song plays during the scene in which RoboCop appears, so it's good that it was associated with a violent movie, but since it's the same cyborg, the easy use of the song made me laugh and wonder if it was a comedy. It is said that this situation happened at a theater in the United States.

“RoboCop” trailer

Executives at Orion Pictures did not listen to the passionate opinions of RoboCop producer John Davison, and as a result they only managed to come up with a budget of $13 million, including advertising costs. ``RoboCop'' was made for about 1.4 billion yen in today's Japanese yen. In other words, the budget is extremely low. That's understandable; a film that combines robots and police officers seemed like it was only for children, and executives at Orion Pictures were reluctant to direct director Paul Verhoeven, who was active in the Netherlands but had no track record in the United States. I had no sense of the future...

“Blade Runner” preview

In the first place, Ed Newmeyer, the original author and scriptwriter of ``RoboCop,'' began working on ` `Blade Runner '' (1982), which at the time was not well-received by the film industry or science fiction fans, even before it was released on the road. He was an enthusiastic fan, and was particularly interested in android replicants. The draft of ``RoboCop'' was gradually constructed based on the picture of replicants vs. humans in the movie, but if he had not witnessed the existence of replicants on the set of ``Blade Runner'' in 1981, he would not have known the world. ``RoboCop'' did not exist in 2007, so this is an episode that highlights the greatness of director Ridley Scott.