What began as a simple tweet demanding a RoboCop statue in Detroit quickly went viral and turned into a Kickstarter campaign that exceeded all expectations. Seven years later, the iconic statue will finally be installed at the Michigan Science Center, located near downtown Detroit.
Officially authorized by MGM, the life-size RoboCop statue was funded through a Kickstarter campaign back in 2011. Seven years later, the project organizers announced that the bronze statue of the hero from Paul Verhoeven’s film will be installed at the Michigan Science Center, although no official date for the public presentation has been confirmed yet.
The statue was modeled directly from the original suit, carefully restored from the first film through 3D scanning technology, resulting in a huge figure of the iconic Robot Cop measuring more than three meters tall.
The project began with a man who tweeted to then-mayor Dave Bing saying that Detroit needed a RoboCop statue. The tweet quickly went viral, leading to a funding campaign that raised more than $67,000 for the project.
Over the past seven years, the project faced a series of delays due to issues ranging from the statue’s size (which increased from two to three meters) to problems with sculptor Giorgio Gikas, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2016.
RoboCop is a 1987 film directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Peter Weller as police officer Alex Murphy, who is brutally killed by a gang and later revived by the megacorporation Omni Consumer Products as a law enforcement agent. That was the birth of RoboCop.
The film’s success led to two sequels, a remake released in 2014, animated and live-action series, comics, video games, and now an iconic statue that will be installed at the Michigan Science Center, near downtown Detroit. Congratulations to all of Detroit!
