Earlier today Brad at Bloody Disgusting sent out a heads up email about a scoop his site had – the Robocop remake, which Dave Davis broke here on CHUD last year, is dead. Brad did discover that Ed Neumeier, who wrote the original film, was to have been involved.
But don’t weep for Ed – Moviehole today spoke to him and found out that he’s staring down the barrel of a greenlight for a third Starship Troopers movie, which he will write and direct, and that somehow Sony managed to convince master thespian and major league star Casper Van Dien to come back for the sequel. How he found time from honing his craft on basic cable movies, I just don’t know.
Let’s get a couple of things out the way. Starship Troopers, which Neumeier wrote, is one of my favorite movies. Seriously. That’s not an ironic joke, that’s not a guilty pleasure admission. I fucking love Starship Troopers. I love that it works as metaphor and satire and that it works as an insanely gory bughunt movie and that it works as the film where Doogie Hauser was a Nazi. I have seen Starship Troopers about a zillion times. I have owned the film on three different video formats so far.
I never saw Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, though. Without Paul Verhoeven’s deranged genius behind it I just didn’t see the point. But after reading some of the hints that Neumeier gave Moviehole – “There’ll be a new bug or two. Also draft riots. Religion makes a comeback. And the Federation has a new weapon.” – I’m ready to give this sure to be direct to DVD film a shot.