He made the infamous Cronulla Race Riots funny (in a cogent, highly intelligent manner), turned one of Australia’s greatest legends on its metallic head with Ned, and actually did something original in the over-populated zombie genre with Little Monsters. Now one-time actor (Howzat, Marking Time) and full time director, Abe Forsythe, has received the metaphorical tap on the shoulder from Hollywood. Though the director recently told FilmInk that he’d lined everything up on a US-funded, self-created project, it looks like that film may have been put on the backburner for now, with news just in that Forsythe has actually been given the plum gig of directing a new Robocop film.
Abe Forsythe with Lupita Nyong’o on the set of Little Monsters.
One of the truly great sci-fi flicks of the eighties, the ingeniously blood-splattered Robocop was directed by Paul Verhoeven, and came complete with lashings of black humour, demented perversity, and lacerating social comment. A critical darling and crowd favourite, the film birthed two loopy but inferior sequels, a television series, an absolutely shithouse 2014 remake, two animated TV series, a television mini-series, video games, and a number of comic book adaptations. Following the lead of the recent Halloween and Terminator: Dark Fate, the crappily titled Robocop Returns will be positioned as a direct sequel to the original film, and will ignore the events of all the other iterations of the character. Initially scripted by the original’s writers, Ed Neumier and Michael Miner, the project got a rejig from Justin Rhodes (the aforementioned Terminator: Dark Fate), and will now go through Abe Forsythe’s darkly funny screenwriting filter. At one time earmarked for Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium), Robocop Returns represents a major step-up for Abe Forsythe, who we desperately hope can keep his head and sense of cinematic style amongst the Hollywood madness. We’re backing a big win for Abe…
For more on Abe Forsythe and Little Monsters, click here and here.
