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Trivia / RoboCop 3

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  • Billing Displacement: Nancy Allen gets second billing (under Robert John Burke), despite having less screentime than Rip Torn (who appears in more scenes than her), and despite being killed off a third of the way through the film.
  • Box Office Bomb: Budget, $22 million. Box office, $10,696,210.
  • California Doubling: The film was shot in Atlanta, using many of the buildings that would soon be torn down to make room for the facilities for the 1996 Summer Olympics.
  • Creator Backlash:
    • Nancy Allen wasn't fond of the movie and didn't want to be part of the movie in the first place; she specifically requested that her character be killed off in order to get out of the franchise.
    • Edward Neumeier, co-writer of the first movie is also on record as to hating the weapon arm and jetpack.
    • Fred Dekker voiced his opinion about the finished product. While he maintained that he had a great time making it and was still pleased with the result, he admitted that there were inherent problems with the film as well as limitations in its production. He felt that one of those problems was that Murphy/RoboCop's personal journey had already been wrapped up in the first movie, leaving little more for him to do than fight bad guys in the sequels. His biggest regret was that he had toned down the action, cynicism and violence too much at the request of the studio, who wanted to direct the movie at a younger audience (since they had already produced the animated series). Also, the basic premise of RoboCop siding with homeless people against an evil company did not suit the political climate at the time. Lastly, he had intended to put in more Hong Kong-style action through the Otomo character (being a big fan of that genre), but he lacked the budget to hire an Asian stunt team that could pull it off. What haunts him to this day about making the film is the screenplay itself. He felt that if he had another writer who had written the script like Frank Miller or his best friend, Shane Black, he would've had a different perspective and strengthened the roles of the actors in the film. He also personally regrets not setting up the scene where RoboCop's Flight Pack is introduced. If he had to do it over again, he would've showed what its capabilities were for the payoff at the end of the film. Dekker also said that he regretted not resurrecting Lewis as a RoboCop herself, which he felt would have validated the movie's existence.
  • Creator Killer: After having some success directing the cult films Night of the Creeps and The Monster Squad, Fred Dekker hasn't directed anything after the failure of this film. He would find some work as an uncredited script doctor for Demolition Man and Lethal Weapon 4, but he wouldn't receive another credit until being credited as a co-writer for The Predator in 2018, 25 years after this film.
  • Dyeing for Your Art: Because Orion wouldn't put up the cash to build new suits for Robert John Burke, he had to wear a slightly modified version of the suits Peter Weller wore in RoboCop 2. Burke had said wearing the suits, even for a short time, was painful due to the height difference between him and Weller.
  • Franchise Killer: The film was critically panned for its banal subject matter compared to the previous two installments and, when audiences took notice, flopped at the box office and single-handedly killed the franchise for over twenty-one years. Between that time, attempts to continue the popularity of the franchise through a live-action TV series, a second animated television series, a comic book series, a live-action miniseries and a video game from Titus Software didn't really help matters.
  • Killed by Request: As noted above, Nancy Allen specifically asked for Lewis to be killed off.
  • Old Shame: As mentioned above, Nancy Allen and Fred Dekker aren't fond of the movie.
  • The Other Darrin: Contrary to popular belief, Peter Weller was actually interested in returning for this film, and actually came to visit Fred Dekker personally. They spent a good half an hour talking together, in which he told him that he wanted to do it, but had a conflict with filming Naked Lunch in which he had been recently cast after actively campaigning for the lead role. Dekker was very impressed and honored to this day by the fact that Weller actually came over to talk to him about his intentions. The scene where RoboCop receives facial reconstruction after being badly damaged and burned was written in to explain why RoboCop no longer looked like Weller in his scenes without his helmet.
  • Prop Recycling: The "Johnny Rehab" action figure line that is shown in the third act of the film is notably the "Robocop and the Ultra Police" toys of the late Eighties.
  • Refitted for Sequel: Plot elements like OCP forcing people to move from their homes with Rehab-forces and the donut shop scene with all the cops pulling their guns out came from Frank Miller's original script for RoboCop 2.
  • Release Date Change: The film was originally scheduled for a summer 1993 release, but being a relatively low-budget action movie, it was pushed back to the fall of 1993 to avoid competition with expensive blockbusters like Jurassic Park (1993).
  • The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The film completed production in 1991 and was initially scheduled for release in the summer of 1992. It would languish on the shelf until the following year as Orion Pictures went through bankruptcy and was bought out.
  • Spared by the Cut: In addition to the Rehabs being recycled from original from Frank Miller's original script for 2, so was their plan to discredit Murphy by framing him for the murder of one of his fellow officers — only in said script, it was Sgt. Reed. When it was revisited for this film, it was changed to Lewis and Reed survives the film. This also extends to several Metro West officers as the Rehabs also killed several of them in the climax of the script.
  • Throw It In!: As revealed in his Netflix special, Our Man in Chicago, it was Jeff Garlin's idea for his character, the doughnut shop clerk, to be eating a doughnut in the scene where the shop is nearly robbed — and ended up sick because he ate 36 doughnuts over the course of filming.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • As with the second film, Frank Miller was initially hired to write the script, and then his script was heavily rewritten. He later turned the unused script into a comic - Frank Miller's RoboCop.
    • Originally Nikko was named "Keiko" and she was a four year old Japanese girl who was a genius. This explains why her mother was Japanese in the film and was later changed when the production could not find a young girl who could've played the role and reworked it to an American girl.

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