MGM are, and have been for many years, deal­ing with sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial debts, to the tune of almost $4bn. With con­cerns about the company’s sol­vency, a recent con­fer­ence call debated whether the stu­dio should file for bank­ruptcy in a bid to gain back some of the oth­er­wise lost money.

Should this hap­pen, MGM’s assets might be sold to cover the debts, includ­ing the rights to the James Bond fran­chise, the poten­tial Robo­Cop remake could never see the light of day. This would inevitably delay Bond 23, and who knows what else.

MGM’s cur­rent plan is to con­vince cred­i­tors to waiver inter­est pay­ments until Jan­u­ary 2010, with that money instead going to fund new movies. There’s a lot up in the air right now, but we’ll keep you posted.

Some rumors started cir­cu­lat­ing the net that Dar­ren Aronof­sky was off the Robo­Cop reboot project, AICN quickly con­tacted Dar­ren for some confirmation:

So I put the ques­tion to Dar­ren, and promptly got a response from him say­ing sim­ply, “No, Still on it.” — he also stated that he’d let me know as things pro­gressed, but there were no new details at this time.

Whilst not strictly Robo­cop movie news, this video gives us an insight into the director’s (Dar­ren Aronof­sky) movie mak­ing techniques.

Dar­ren Aronof­sky is a screen­writer, direc­tor, and pro­ducer, who most recently directed and pro­duced the two-time Golden Globe win­ning and Oscar-nominated film, The Wrestler. In 1996, he began work on his first fea­ture film, Pi, a psy­cho­log­i­cal scifi thriller which landed him an award at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val. Aronof­sky quickly became a favorite among indie-film fans. In 2000, he directed and wrote the screen­play to Requiem for a Dream which earned a Best Actress Oscar-nomination. Aronof­sky attended Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, where his senior the­sis film, Super­mar­ket Sweep, became a National Stu­dent Acad­emy Award Final­ist. After grad­u­at­ing Har­vard in 1991, he attended the Amer­i­can Film Institute.

Talk­ing to MTV on the Golden Globes red car­pet Robo­Cop direc­tor Aronof­sky spoke about the reboot of the fran­chise. Looks like Aronof­sky wants to take the char­ac­ter in a new direc­tion, explor­ing this new tech­no­log­i­cal era we find our­selves in:

“The thing that’s excit­ing for a film­maker like me about [“Robo­Cop”] is that it’s not as iconic as some of the other titles out there, so there’s room to do stuff with it,” Aronof­sky told MTV News. “It had incred­i­ble insight into the future.”

[…]

“The world has so changed—how much every one of us is some­what of a cyborg at this point with cell phones hang­ing out of us, with implants of all dif­fer­ent types.” Aronof­sky posed. In the same breath, how­ever, he cau­tioned that the project is still in its early stages. “I think there’s a lot of really timely ideas in it. If it comes together, it’ll be great, but who knows?”

As for a pos­si­ble cameo by orig­i­nal star Peter Weller, Aronof­sky backed away from any com­mit­ments. “I can’t make any promises,” he assured, “but I’ll show as much respect to the fans as I can.”

Fol­low­ing the Aronof­sky announce­ment MTV caught up with the pro­duc­ers Brad Fis­cher and Mike Medavoy to answer the rush of new questions.

Sequel?

When quizzed about the fourth Robo­cop movie’s inte­gra­tion into the exist­ing uni­verse the pro­duc­ers stated:

“None of [the ear­lier films are] going to be canon­i­cal, as a mat­ter of fact,” Fis­cher revealed. “I wouldn’t say it’s a direct sequel.“
“Def­i­nitely not a sequel,” Medavoy added, say­ing he pre­ferred the term “reimagining.”

Why make a new movie?

But why a “Robo­cop” reboot at all? Medavoy, who worked on the ear­lier three films, said it’s because the themes explored in the first film, of fad­ing human­ity in the face of cor­po­rate and com­mer­cial omnipres­ence, have only become more rel­e­vant in the inter­ven­ing 15 years.

“The themes of machines and tech­nol­ogy, for instance, that’s cer­tainly become even more preva­lent today in terms of man giv­ing up cer­tain things to his cre­ations and his tech­nol­ogy and his reliance to that. It’s pretty provoca­tive stuff,” he said. “You’ve got peo­ple today with all kinds of dif­fer­ent implants and mechan­i­cal implants. Where does that per­son become no longer human? After the first one? After 50 per­cent of the brain gets replaced? A lot of the themes that we dealt with in the orig­i­nal are still very inter­est­ing to us.”

Rat­ing?

So many remakes and sequels have been dumbed down to a younger audi­ence, there’s a big fear that the new Robo­cop movie may be bun­dled into the PG-13 group with all the nitty-gritty-grind-n-gore cut out. This is what Medavoy had to say on that,

“Well I was involved with the orig­i­nal ‘Robo­cop,’ and it was an R, and the like­li­hood is that this will be an R. It’s likely to be an R unless the direc­tor cuts back on some of it.”

No details on the plot were announced.

In July 2008 at Comic-con MGM announced to the world that Dar­ren Aronof­sky, (direc­tor of The Wrestler, The Foun­tain, Requiem for a Dream an Pi) shall be helm­ing the 2010 recre­ation of Robo­cop. Screen­writer David Self (Road to Perdi­tion) will be pen­ning the script.

Mary Par­ent, MGM’s chair­man said: “Dar­ren is unde­ni­ably one of the most tal­ented, orig­i­nal and vis­ceral film­mak­ers, and David is one of the great­est writ­ers in Hol­ly­wood. All of us at MGM couldn’t be more excited.” Whilst pro­duc­ers David Thwaites and Brad Fis­cher added: “With a film­maker of Dar­ren Aronofsky’s vision and imag­i­na­tion and a writer of David Self’s cal­iber, we are poised to bring to the screen an enter­tain­ing and provoca­tive film, which will now be under the cre­ative guid­ance of two of the best sto­ry­tellers work­ing in our indus­try today.”

Now all we need is Clint Mansell to do the score… . All of Aronosky’s movies are pure gold, need­less to say I am very excited about this movie.

Aronofsky’s pre­vi­ous work

Pi

Requiem for a Dream

The Foun­tain

The Wrestler