'RoboCop Returns' Director Neill Blomkamp Is Off Project, Directing New Horror Film Instead

RoboCop Returns is in need of a new commanding officer. More than a year after Neill Blomkamp was announced to direct a new RoboCop movie that would act as a continuation of the first film, he has confirmed that he is no longer the RoboCop Returns director. But Chappie fans can hold onto a sliver of hope: Blomkamp is already hard at work at a new horror movie.

Early Thursday morning (or late night for you West Coast folks), Blomkamp tweeted that he is now "off RoboCop."

"I am shooting new horror/thriller and MGM can't wait/ need to shoot Robocop now," he added. "Excited to watch it in theaters with other fans."

Since the original announcement, Blomkamp has kept fans regularly updated on the status of RoboCop Returns, revealing as recently as last month that the film would feature the original suit from the 1987 sci-fi action film. Blomkamp had expressed hope that original RoboCop Peter Weller would return to fill in that suit, but that seems more unlikely now that the filmmaker himself has departed the project. There's no word yet on the current status of RoboCop Returns, which original RoboCop writers Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner were set to produce, while Justin Rhodes, writer of the upcoming Terminator: Dark Fate, was in the process of rewriting an older script from Neumeier and Miner.

Blomkamp hasn't had much luck when it comes to reviving beloved franchises — his much-anticipated Alien sequel is dead in space, and we can forget about that Halo movie. His last original feature film was the poorly received 2015 film Chappie, though he was supposed to make a return with Greenland, a disaster movie with Chris Evans that the director told EW came to halt because "there's some political stuff happening." The filmmaker had recently shifted his focus to Oats Studios, the independent space he launched in 2015, which allowed him to experiment with short horror and sci-fi films.

There are no details yet on what unnamed "horror/thriller" film Blomkamp is currently working on, but it's possible that he could be adapting one of the aforementioned short films to feature form — something he tried to do recently with the short film "Firebase" through a crowd-funding campaign that he canceled in April 2018.