‘Robocop’ Statue To Be Erected In Detroit Next Summer Following Kickstarter Campaign

In the 1987 movie directed by legendary helmer Paul Verhoeven, Peter Weller’s ROBOCOP was the ultimate in law enforcement in the futuristic Detroit, and now 26 years after the original movie was released, and a mere few months before its remake hits cinemas starring Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman and Joel Kinnaman as the title character, an actual statue of the iconic character is to be erected in the city.

The news of the statue being built has come following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2011, which  managed to raise a huge $67,000+ of a $50,000 budget in just six days.

The idea came from a tweet to the city’s mayor, which we’ve posted below:

Major Bing’s reply was that there were ‘no plans to erect a statue to Robocop, but thanks for the suggestion,’ but that didn’t stop John Leonard, who dreamt up the idea two years ago.

None of us have ever made a giant solid metal permanent sculpture before. It turns out to be a pretty expensive process (who would have thought?), but not too much for the world to fund. After talking to numerous sculptors and metal workers, the current game plan is this: We can take a relatively small figure of RoboCop (conceivably even an action figure), have it 3D scanned by lasers (cool!) and scale its form to create a light-weight model of any size we’d like, which can then be used to pour and cast liquid metal.

Well, their plan paid off after a massive $25,000 donation from graphic designer Pete Hottelet of San Francisco’s Omni Consumer Products, plus hundreds of other fans including the verbal backing of original star Peter Weller, and now it looks like the statue will be placed in Wayne State University’s TechTown campus in the city. It will hit the campus next summer, which will tie in nicely after ROBOCOP (2014) hits cinemas in February, and the home formats later in the year.

The statue is a collaboration between Venus Bronze Works and Center for Conservation, Warren Ally Foundry and Edgewise Forge. Just brilliant, and we can’t wait for the unvieling.

Watch the trailer for the new film below.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter, Kickstarter