Rigel Entertainment and Fireworks Entertainment have joined forces to bring the Robocop franchise back to TV. This week Fireworks began production on four two-hour Robo telefilms that will be aired as the miniseries Robocop: Prime Directives.

The series takes place 10 years after the events of the original Robocop film and features Page Fletcher in the title role of Robocop, the cyborg created from the gunned-down remains of human police officer Alex Murphy. Maurice Dean Wint will play Delta City Security Commander John T. Cable, Maria Del Mar will  play Sara Cable, Anthony Lemke has signed on as Murphy's son James, David Fraser will  play the technical genius Edwin Hobley, and Geraint Wyn-Davies will play a villain in the series.

The first installment of Prime Directives is called "Dark Justice" and pits Robocop against a high-tech terrorist known as Bone Machine. When Cable--Murphy's friend and partner--links Bone Machine to a group of ambitious executives known as "The Trust," The Trust reprograms Murphy to kill Cable.

The second episode is called "Meltdown" and features Cable's return as a new high-tech Robocop who is programmed to kill Murphy. Meanwhile, The Trust sends in a squad of "robohunters" to destroy both of the cyborg officers, who are battling it out in the ruins of Old Detroit.

In the third installment, "Resurrection," The Trust manages to seize control of OCP, the company that created Robocop and Delta City.  They turn all OCP operations over to an artificial intelligence known as SAINT, but a rogue OCP employee brainwashes Cable to deliver a virus to the system. Meanwhile, the robohunters return for another try at the cyborgs, this time enhanced with bio-boosters and led by Alex's son James.

Finally, in "Crash and Burn" Murphy has to fight his way past Cable in order to disable the now-infected SAINT system before it destroys the city. However, the only way he can defeat the computer is to set off an electronic pulse that will result in his own death.

Prime Directives is being produced and directed by Julian Grant from scripts written by Brad Abraham and Joseph O'Brien. Fireworks president Adam Haight said the series will have the edgy feel of the first movie, which was lost when the franchise made its first transition to TV. "We've pretty much cranked up the action on these," he added.

The series is currently shooting in Canada and will air on Canada's City TV in 2000. Prime Directives has also been pre-sold to several foreign markets but does not yet have a U.S. distributor. (Sci Fi Wire)

 

Photo courtesy of SciFi Channel

Here's a great article posted on the Web by David Migicovsky on January 23.

ROBOCOP QUIETLY SHOOTING IN AND AROUND TORONTO
By CLAIRE BICKLEY -- Toronto Sun
For the past five months, one of the most ambitious productions in Canadian TV history has been filming in and around Toronto--and you probably haven't heard a thing about it.

That's nothing short of remarkable, considering the product and the people who are putting it together.

First of all, there's director/producer Julian Grant, a filmmaker whose guiding idols are big, bold action artists John Woo, Dario Argento and James Cameron.

Grant has a credit list of kickboxing movies, erotic thrillers, music videos and explosive made-for-cable films. He likes camouflage pants, the Ramones and to proclaim that he knows only one way to make a movie -- "Louder than God."

His latest production has been, typically, anything but demure.

"Three thousand rounds of ammunition and 500 squibs. That's an average day for us," says Grant, 37, who also has been indulging a boyish enthusiasm for bombs and fireblazing, automatic weapons.

How, then, has his RoboCop: Prime Directives -- reviving the enduring sci-fi franchise in four new TV movies -- managed to fly below the radar of the mainstream media?

The answer is: Very deliberately.

"It's a whisper campaign," Grant says of his strategy for the serial, which will be on television in much of the world in the fall. In Canada, it will air on CHUM/CITY channels, including nationally on Space. In the U.S., it's likely headed first to home video, then pay cable and then into broadcast syndication.

Until he allowed The Sun on set -- "Your readers are my viewers" -- Grant had avoided daily newspapers as if he had a fatal allergy to newsprint. Instead, he sowed the seeds of anticipation from the ground up, via the Internet, through the niche sci-fi community and within the industry.

"We're taking a page, obviously, out of The Blair Witch Project's book," he says of lessons learned from that Net-fuelled phenom. "Already these specialty chat groups are abuzz about RoboCop. It's nice because you can't buy good word of mouth. Studios try all the time, but you can't fake Internet interest."

Few have gone so far to feed it.

"Last week, we had these sci-fi writers from this magazine in England," reports actress Leslie Hope, who plays genetically enhanced mercenary Ann R. Key. "They were just so jacked to be on RoboCop. I mean, really excited."

Grant gave an all-access pass to a Toronto fanboy and Webmaster. 'The Gore-met,' as he is known on the Web, posted an enthusiastic preview to the popular online discussion group alt.horror, a report with the potential to be read by millions.

"He's got an established presence and reputation. People know who he is and he said this show is okay," Grant says. "That's not flack PR stuff that we're sending out."

Thinking like a fan has been Grant's approach since Toronto's Fireworks Entertainment enlisted him to produce and direct the fully Canadian production, which has a budget approaching $15 million.

Grant turned to two friends, Brad Abraham and Joseph O'Brien, to write the 450-page shooting script for the four, two-hour films. Abraham, 27, had no previously produced projects unless you count the Star Wars homage he made at age seven with his Dad's Super 8. O'Brien, 29, had had one project made, the little-seen thriller Trail Of A Serial Killer.

What Grant, Abraham and O'Brien had in common was a love for director Paul Verhoeven's original 1987 RoboCop movie -- the dark tale of ordinary, decent Detroit policeman Alex Murphy, murdered in the line of duty and resurrected as the cyborg future of law enforcement. Part man, part machine, he was always to do internal battle with his lost -- or is that lingering? -- humanity.

"Paul Verhoeven's bleakly satirical look at the American corporate culture was something that we really felt akin to," says Grant, taking a break during Shooting Day 64, this time at a former lumber factory in Scarborough. "As a European, Verhoeven was uniquely poised to satirize the American consumer culture. As Canadians, we are too."

He and his writers also shared a distaste for the RoboCops that followed -- a second and third feature film and a TV series produced in 1993 by Toronto's Skyvision Entertainment, a company that Fireworks bought a couple of years ago.

When RoboCop: The Series was cancelled in 1994 after its largest U.S. station group pulled out, it had been sold to 120 countries.

Grant actually wrinkles his nose when that series' family-friendliness is recalled, including its introduction of "tagger" guns which let Robo mark fleeing felons for later capture, rather than wipe them out. By contrast, Grant predicts his RoboCop will require a minimum TV-14 rating label for violence to air in the U.S.

"We've pulled no punches. It is dark and bloody and violent," he says. "It's an opportunity to reinvent RoboCop as a dark knight, as opposed to the TV-safe version. We're trying to almost invent a genre -- spaghetti cyber-punk, the idea of John Woo and Sergio Leone getting together on the back lot of The Crow."

So the new RoboCop simply ignores all but the first film and sets itself 10 years hence in our present or, as Grant puts it, "The year 2000 -- but slightly to the left."

The only carry-over characters are RoboCop/Alex Murphy, played by Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker) and his son James (Anthony Lemke), now an executive with the all-powerful Omni Consumer Products corporation and cyborg manufacturer.

There's even a new Robo in town, the cyborg rebuild of Murphy's former police-force colleague John Cable (Maurice Dean Wint). RoboCable is RoboCop's mortal enemy. He is bigger, better-armed and younger than RoboCop. Now 10 years off the assembly line, dinged and dented, RoboCop is feeling his age and facing redundancy.

RoboCable is programmed by mad scientist Kaydick, played by Geraint Wyn Davies. Kaydick's name is an homage to sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick.

Writer O'Brien says they strived to make this new Robo franchise as much of its time as the first was, and to restore its dry, referential humour. Look, for instance, for a branch of the Chelsea Clinton Savings And Loans in the opening instalment.

"The first one was very much a time capsule -- Reagan-era, super-consumerist," O'Brien says. "Now we talk about news that is primarily about spin control and not information. We talk about exploitation TV. We have a commercial for When RoboCop Attacks, which you can buy for $99.99."

Some of RoboCop's concepts have grown less far-fetched with the passage of time.

"A lot of the problems of RoboCop: Prime Directives aren't that far removed from our daily life," Abraham says. "The way technology is intruding on daily life, how everyone and his grandmother has a cell phone and a pager. It's almost more pertinent now than it was 13 years ago."

The final piece of the RoboCop puzzle was Fletcher, who stepped into the lead after the last TV Robo, Richard Eden, was unable to reprise the part.

Ironically, he had been offered the role back in 1993 but had turned it down, disenchanted with television after a long, bitter legal fight over Hitchhiker residuals, which he ultimately lost except for a token amount.

This time, the material and the timing were right.

 "Things do blow up a lot. Yes they do. But I think more than anything else we've got a good story, too, which is where I get my satisfaction," says Fletcher, 47.

He was intrigued by the narrowing of the gap between RoboCop's speculation and real-life science -- Dolly the cloned sheep, take a baaa. But the irresistible draw for him was what he sees as the heart of the character -- the very opposite of high-tech.

"He represents exactly what my parents taught me growing up in our little village in Nova Scotia. When I think back on it, it really was a fairytale place to grow up with nothing to worry about.

"I think that's the kind of world that RoboCop would like to have. No worries. He just wants the world to be a better place."

Seven secrets from the RoboSuit Room:

1. Name on the door: Los Robos.

2. Name of the first costume layer, a Spandex body stocking: The Spidey Suit.

3. How much heavier RoboCop's legs are than RoboCable's: Almost twice, because he's an earlier prototype. Lucky break for Maurice Dean Wint.

4. Head hard, hands soft. A big blob of K-Y Jelly is required to slide on the Robos' snug rubber gloves.

5. Name of costume piece that protects the actors' manly bits: The Diaper.

6. Why RoboCable was so squeaky during our visit: "I need a good oiling," said Wint.

7. Why he won't get it: Robocops have no manly bits. Human from the neck up, remember? Although, teased Wint, rather promisingly, "You haven't seen my techno-spike."