Boy oh boy, do we love ourselves some RoboCop here at Nerdbot. That 1987 film is still an absolute, stone-cold classic. Its critical and commercial success has never been truly replicated. The direct sequels were mostly pale imitations. The lack of the original director, Paul Verhoeven, is a big part of that. But they also lacked the violence, gore, and satire. At least the video game, RoboCop: Rogue City, got a lot of that right. It helps that the original actor, Peter Weller, returned to voice good old Alex Murphy, aka RoboCop, again. We’ve been wondering who’s going to take up the cyborg armor for Amazon’s upcoming RoboCop series. After all, we’ve been reporting on it for a while. Now we know it’ll be Dan Stevens.
Dan Stevens as RoboCop
Yes, Alex Murphy will finally be played by a man whose name is even more plain-sounding than his own. Dan Stevens’ resume is anything but ordinary, though. The English actor has worked his way through film, television, audiobooks, and the stage. On TV, he played Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey. He also played the main character, David Haller, on the FX X-Men-adjacent show, Legion. Remember that one? Yeah, no one really does, but it happened. Three seasons. Go figure.
Meanwhile, in film, Stevens took a noteworthy turn as the titular Beast in 2017’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast. He also appeared in the criminally overlooked horror film Cuckoo in 2024. That’s also the year he appeared in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Sadly, he was neither Godzilla nor Kong. He just played a dude named Trapper. Now he’s going to be playing a man named Murphy, Alex Murphy. It’s some mighty fine progress considering it took forever to even get this greenlit. We’ve been talking about this Amazon series since 2023, and they didn’t fully greenlight it until July of 2026. How many people could have been served and protected in that time span?
The Voice of Authority
It’s going to be hard to top Peter Weller’s performance. One thing Stevens has in his favor, though, is his extensive amount of voice work. He’s done performances in Solar Opposites, LEGO: Star Wars, The Boy and the Heron, and a number of audiobooks. Voice acting is a big part of RoboCop’s performance given the actor playing him is generally buried in armor. With your face obscured and your body language covered, you have to do a lot with your voice. Stevens has the talent to pull it off.
Now we’ll just have to see if Amazon can pull the series off in general when it hits our screens eventually. Thank you for your cooperation.
