Joel Kinnaman Offered ‘RoboCop’ Lead

Director Jose Padilha has offered the lead role of the RoboCop reboot to Joel Kinnaman (The Killing).

If he accepts the role, he will play Officer Alex Murphy, originally portrayed by Peter Weller. The film is a reboot of the 1987 original, directed by Paul Verhoeven. It focuses on a police officer who is killed on the job and rebuilt as a cyborg. The original had two sequels and several television series spinoffs.

Last year, Padilha gave his plans for the reboot. He said: “I have my take on it. And I can tell you this: In the first ‘RoboCop’ when Alex Murphy is shot, gunned down, then you see some hospitals and stuff and then you cut to him as RoboCop. My movie is between those two cuts. How do you make RoboCop? How do you slowly bring a guy to be a robot? How do you actually take humanity out of someone and how do you program a brain, so to speak, and how does that affect an individual?”

Nick Schenk (Gran Torino) has been hired to rewrite the script. Production is expected to begin this summer.