Exclusive: Chris Evans Eyed For New RoboCop Movie
In the latest Giant Freakin Robot exclusive, Sony is eyeing Chris Evans to take on the role of Robocop in an upcoming movie.
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Ever since we saw an aged Chris Evans sitting on the park bench at the end of Avengers: Endgame we’ve been waiting to see when/ if the actor would return to the action game. Would it be in a return as Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Or would it be something totally new, maybe another franchise to headline in a totally different world? The latest Giant Freakin Robot exclusive from our trusted and proven source has it that Chris Evans could be doing the latter. Apparently, Sony is eyeing Chris Evans to play RoboCop in a reboot of the franchise.
While it isn’t specific here on the actual movie, it would make sense that Chris Evans would be closing in on starring in the planned RoboCop Returns. That is a planned sequel to the original film and has been in development for a bit now. Abe Forsythe is set to direct the flick and it will, of course, return the franchise to Detroit. There is some chance that Sony has decided to take things in a different direction though, rebooting the RoboCop franchise in a different way. That much isn’t totally clear at this point.
If this Chris Evans casting was for RoboCop Returns, it would be interesting to see how they took the story if it was, in fact, a direct sequel to the first one. In that movie, Peter Weller played Alex Murphy, a Detroit police officer who is converted into a RoboCop following his death at the hands of a criminal gang. Though the real story is the corrupt nature of Omni Consumer Products, the company that originally builds the RoboCop technology. The nature of the main character means that different actors or actresses can fill the armor meaning a sequel works even without the original cast.
And if it happened, Chris Evans and Peter Weller won’t have been the only guys to fill the RoboCop suit over the years. Weller reprised the role in RoboCop 2 and then Robert Burke took over the role in RoboCop 3. In 2014, there was a reboot of the franchise with Joel Kinnaman in the lead role. This was closer to a remake of the first film with Kinnaman cast as Alex Murphy and some other key figures from the first flick also recast. It actually performed pretty well at the box office, all things considered, scoring $242 million on its $100 million budget.
It will be interesting to see how this goes, and one would think that RoboCop Returns or another RoboCop project would be able to land a significant star for the lead role. Even all of these years later, the character still brings along significant name recognition.
As for Chris Evans, it doesn’t look there are any immediate plans to return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Steve Rogers, especially now that Anthony Mackie has officially taken over the Captain America role. But Evans does have some bigger projects in the works. He’s set to voice Buzz Lightyear in the standalone movie about that Pixar character. And he’s also teaming back up with Marvel’s Anthony and Joe Russo in The Gray Man. And he’ll also be starring alongside Dwayne Johnson in Red One. Could he be adding RoboCop to the list?
