RoboCop is booting up to brutally fight crime yet again, this time as a TV show headlined by a fan-favorite genre actor.
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Dan Stevens, beloved by horror fans for starring roles in cult hits like The Guest, Abigail, and Cuckoo, and blockbusters like Beauty and the Beast and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, is set to star in Amazon Prime’s upcoming TV show reboot of 1987’s RoboCop.
According to Deadline, the 43-year-old became a frontrunner for the role soon after the project was announced as greenlit last month. The upcoming show is being shepherded by showrunner Peter Ocko (The Office, Dead Like Me) and Blumhouse Atomic Monster.
The eight-episode series promises to stick close to the ultraviolent original film plotwise, which starred Peter Weller in the title role.
“Peter Ocko has crafted a vision that honors the soul of what made the original so enduring while building something entirely fresh and urgent for today,” Amazon MGM Studios’ Head of Global TV Peter Friedlander gushed, per Deadline.
Meanwhile, Stevens himself took to Instagram to confirm the casting. Clearly a fan of the material, the actor posed in front of a RoboCop action figure in a video that also included Deadline‘s piece about the big news.
“Buzz buzz…🦾 Dead or alive, you’re coming with me…” he wrote alongside the post, quoting the character’s most iconic line.
RoboCop Fans React to Dan Stevens Landing Title Role
Meanwhile, fans and high-profile pals weighed in on Stevens taking on the iconic part in the comments section.
“This is perfect,” The Boys star Jack Quaid wrote. Seth Rogen added, “F— yeahhhh.” Stevens’ Abigail co-star Kathryn Newton also weighed in with “Let’s go DAN❤️.”
“I’d buy this for a dollar,” another fan wrote, quoting another famous line from the OG film.
The casting seems spot on, also in terms of body type. Stevens is slender, just like Weller was when he played RoboCop. This helps when the actor goes from playing the very human cop Alex Murphy (mortally wounded in the line of duty before undergoing the cybernetic procedure that makes him RoboCop) to the titular character, which requires donning a cumbersome costume and prosthetics.
All signs point to this RoboCop reboot faring better than the 2014 remake starring Joel Kinnaman… but the less said about that misfire, the better.