Dan Stevens to Play RoboCop in Prime Video Series, Wants to Keep the Violence and Satire

Dan Stevens will play Alex Murphy — the murdered officer turned armoured cyborg — in Prime Video's upcoming RoboCop series, an eight-episode reboot based on the MGM film franchise (Deadline).

Stevens, known for Downton Abbey and Legion (The Hollywood Reporter), takes on a role with a long screen history. Peter Weller originated the part in Paul Verhoeven's 1987 original and returned for the 1990 sequel. Robert Burke stepped in for the third instalment in 1993. Joel Kinnaman played a rebooted Murphy in the 2014 remake. Stevens now inherits the badge for the streaming era (Deadline).

The series is written by Peter Ocko. Its premise tracks the original film closely: a giant tech conglomerate persuades a city to put a powerful robot on its police force, and that robot is implanted with the consciousness of a fallen officer named Alex Murphy (Deadline).

Stevens has been vocal about what he wants the show to carry over from the 1987 film. He calls that movie one of his favourites of all time, and he hopes the Prime Video version preserves two things that made it distinctive: its extreme violence and its satire (Deadline).

Verhoeven's original arrived in American cinemas in 1987 with an X rating before cuts earned it an R. It paired comic-book-style action with a mockery of corporate greed and media sensationalism that critics still cite as sharper than the genre usually allowed. Whether a streaming series — eight episodes, a single writer, a platform with its own content standards — can hold both tones at once is a question for the production, not the press release.

For viewers, the appeal is straightforward. A familiar character, a performer with range across drama and genre, and a writer tasked with translating a cult property into a longer format. Prime Video has not yet announced a release date.