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RoboCop

1987 film directed by Paul Verhoeven

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ372514
Source-derived summary

RoboCop is a 1987 American science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. The film stars Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O'Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, and Miguel Ferrer. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit in the near future, RoboCop centers on police officer Alex Murphy (Weller) who is murdered by a gang of criminals and revived by the megacorporation Omni Consumer Products as the cyborg law enforcer RoboCop. Unaware of his former life, RoboCop executes a campaign against crime while coming to terms with the lingering fragments of his humanity.

The film was conceived by Neumeier while working on the set of Blade Runner (1982), and he developed the idea with Miner. Their script was purchased in early 1985 by producer Jon Davison on behalf of Orion Pictures. Finding a director proved difficult; Verhoeven dismissed the script twice because he did not understand its satirical content, until he was convinced of its value by his wife. Filming took place between August and October 1986, mainly in Dallas, Texas with additional filming in Las Colinas and Pittsburgh. Rob Bottin led the special-effects team in creating practical effects, violent gore and the RoboCop costume.

Verhoeven emphasized violence throughout the film, making it so outlandish that it became comical.

Editorial summary

“RoboCop” enters the record as 1987 film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what RoboCop, film and directed can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1987, 1982, 1985, 1986—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1987-07-17, 1988-01-15, 1988-01-07, 1987—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around RoboCop, film and directed.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“RoboCop” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, RoboCop, film and directed provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q372514. VIAF identifies the subject as 316751620. The Library of Congress control number is no2016083525. 5 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1982, 1985 and 1986.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “RoboCop”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow RoboCop primary sources, RoboCop archive and RoboCop research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “RoboCop”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from RoboCop” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.