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

Staff brought together by producer John Davison's passion

By directing Minor, Davison was able to get a budget of $13 million from Orion Pictures, but a major studio approached Minor with an offer to direct, and Davison withdrew from ``RoboCop.'' The deal eventually fell apart, and Miner later made his debut as a commercial director with Empire Pictures' B-movie Deadly Weapon.) Since there were no directors in Hollywood who were interested in "RoboCop," they turned to director Alex Cox, who had just made " Repo Man " a hit, but he had already received many offers for other projects. Furthermore, because there was a rift with Neumayer, the offer was rejected.

Davison was friends with Roger Corman when he was a student, but director Joe Dante, who was a close friend of his, was the only one who took an interest in RoboCop. However, he was turned down because he was working on a major movie at Warner Bros. and was unable to do other work due to his contract. Director Dante gave him some advice, saying, ``Wouldn't it be a good idea for Davison to try his hand at directing for the first time while also serving as a producer?'', but Davison, who is only interested in producing, decides not to look for a director. The journey was extremely difficult.

When I informed Barbara Boyle, an executive at Orion Pictures who had come up with the $13 million budget, about the difficulties in finding a director, she introduced me to director Verhoeven, saying, ``There's a director who has a lot of momentum in the Netherlands.'' Davison repeatedly sent Verhoeven the script for RoboCop, but Verhoeven was never interested. So Davison proposed an idea to depict a cynical satire of American culture, and four revised items incorporating these ideas were sent to him, and with Davison's enthusiasm and support from Verhoeven's wife, Verhoeven was finally commissioned to direct. I decided to do it.

Now that the director has been decided, the next step is to look for staff. The people who would take on the project on a low budget would be Roger Corman's disciples... or rather, people who had worked on New World Pictures' works, thinking that they would be understanding of RoboCop. So he called out to the staff who worked with him on the 1978 film " Piranha ."RoboCop Bottin, who was recognized as a genius from a young age, and Phil Tippett, whose stop-motion skills rival Ray Harryhausen, were invited to create RoboCop's suit and create special makeup. Tippett is able to come up with a design for the enemy robot ED-209, but Bottin is in trouble because he has to create the all-important robot suit.

"RoboCop" © Photofest / Getty Images

Although he was good at creature design, suits for characters treated as heroes were uncharted territory, so he created a design that completely imitated the original comic book `` Judge Dredd '' and Marvel's ``Rom Space Knight,'' and director Verhoeven It seems that the atmosphere on set was frozen as they were repeatedly rejected and were not allowed to film for a long time.

By the way, when RoboCop goes to work for the first time in the middle of the night, he defeats a robber at a small liquor store, and there is a ``Rom Space Knight'' comic casually displayed inside the store. It was also the design prototype for the robo suit, so it seems like it was an homage to the staff.