Murphy actor Joel Kinnaman
spoke to IGN about why he signed up for the
Robocop reboot from director Jose Padhila. Said Kinnaman, "Jose Padhila, the director. When I first heard RoboCop was going to be remade. I said “Yeah, that’s interesting, I’ll probably watch that at some point, but I’m not interested at all to be in it.” However, Kinnaman changed his mind once he learned that he was being targeted for the lead. "Then I found out that Jose wanted to do it and meet me, which I was very flattered by. I followed his work from way before he was going to do this movie, and I was very impressed with both his political analysis of Brazil and the style of filmmaking. The quality of his action that he blends with a very strong visual sense and very strong acting. For me he’s one of the big young directors. After I met him and he told me his vision for this movie, it was something that I really wanted to do. And I had to fight for it. It wasn’t an easily won audition. I had to audition three times. It was while I was filming The Killing up in Vancouver, so I was going up and down."
And just why did Kinnaman fight for the role? Well, according to the actor, he'd been up for lead roles before on other projects, however, while directors loved him, studios were nervous about him considering that he was an unproven commodity. Explains Kinnaman, "At this point in my career, I’d done a TV show that had given me some visibility in the States, but I was still hearing from directors that were interested in doing a movie with me that they couldn’t have me in the lead because I wasn’t a name, even though I was the best person for the part. It’s not bankable – that whole rhetoric." He continued, "So at some point I wanted to take a step into a bigger movie so that I could get to a position so that I could be of help to a director that wanted to get a movie made. To a certain degree, as an actor, the only way we have to define our artistry is by our choices. What choices we make. Because we’re not authors of our own projects. So of course you want to have as many options as possible. So I wanted a bigger movie that would elevate me hopefully to some degree."
RELATED CONTENT: SDCC '13: Samuel L. Jackson Talks 'ROBOCOP' (Video) SDCC '13: 'ROBOCOP' Panel Recap "In RoboCop, the year is 2028 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. Their drones are winning American wars around the globe and now they want to bring this technology to the home front. Alex Murphy (Kinnaman) is a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit. After he is critically injured in the line of duty, OmniCorp utilizes their remarkable science of robotics to save Alex's life. He returns to the streets of his beloved city with amazing new abilities, but with issues a regular man has never had to face before."
RoboCop (2014) is a remake of the classic 1987 sci-fi film from director Paul Verhoeven and lead actor Peter Weller. The remake will be directed by José Padilha and star Joel Kinnaman (The Killing). Also starring are Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, Abbie Cornish and Jackie Earle Haley. Hugh Laurie was originally set to play Keaton's role before dropping out of the picture. The film is a joint-production between MGM and Sony.
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