News RoboCop Nearly 15 Years Later, the Detroit RoboCop Statue Has Finally Found a Home What began as an online joke has finally become part of the city. By Matthew Byrd | Published on December 4, 2025 Photo: MGM Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: MGM Studios The bizarre story of Detroit’s attempt to honor officer Alex James Murphy (aka RoboCop) seemingly ended recently, as a statue of the iconic sci-fi character was finally placed outside the Free Age Productions studio in the city’s Eastern Market area. If the idea of a RoboCop statue in Detroit sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because this project began nearly 15 years ago when a viral tweet directed at then-Detroit Mayor Dave Bing suggested that the city should erect a statue of RoboCop in the style of the Rocky Balboa statue in Philadelphia. The mayor’s Twitter account shot down the idea (which reportedly originated from someone who didn’t even live in Detroit at the time), but the concept of a RoboCop statue quickly took root. Shortly thereafter, a Kickstarter campaign intended to fund the creation of said statue was launched and ultimately garnered over $65,000 in donations. But like many successful Kickstarter campaigns born out of elaborate online jokes, things started to go wrong from there. After securing the necessary funds, the Kickstarter campaign’s organizers (led by filmmaker Brandon Walley and Loveland Technologies CEO Jerry Paffendorf) commissioned Venus Bronze Works to develop a model of the statue. Due to both the various logistical challenges (which included the Venus Bronze Works owner reportedly battling through a cancer scare) and the fact that this particular project required approval from RoboCop rights holder MGM Studios throughout the process, it took a few years for an early version of the statue to be crafted. However, a surprising amount of perseverance eventually paid off, and the campaign’s organizers planned to unveil the statue on “RoboCop Day,” June 3, 2014. That unveiling didn’t happen, though. Instead, it kicked off what proved to be a decade-plus battle to find a home for the statue. At various points, Roosevelt Park, the Michigan Science Center, and Wayne State University were all considered as potential sites for the finished project. However, each was rejected due to numerous complications and legal problems stemming from the character’s aforementioned association with MGM Studios. The statue was eventually moved to an undisclosed location in Eastern Market until the whole thing could be resolved. And though reasonable doubts strongly suggested that the RoboCop statue would forever remain a valiant attempt at a strange idea, it seems to have finally found its forever home. Well… maybe. See, the contract the statue’s organizers have with MGM stipulates that it needs to be in place by the end of 2025. If you haven’t checked your calendar recently, we are almost at that point. That tends to suggest that this location may have been partially chosen out of necessity, so I suppose you can’t rule out the possibility that this may not be the statue’s permanent home. Actually, its “formal” unveiling isn’t set to occur until next year. The statue’s long journey to this point has also been marked by a series of controversies that may never be entirely resolved. Putting aside debates about the money and time that went into this whole thing, the idea that RoboCop should represent Detroit has always struck some as a fundamentally odd idea. After all, the character is essentially capitalist Jesus and an instrument of the corporate-driven dystopia that some believe we are currently spiraling towards. While the RoboCop movie is a blistering and brilliant satire of all of that, the RoboCop character has almost transcended those themes en route to becoming a pop culture commodity. He’s been turned into toys, starred in a children’s cartoon, and now has a statue. Others have long criticized the idea of building a statue of a cop (even a fictional cop) in Detroit. Interestingly, the statue’s organizers were also seemingly aware of that issue, as they decided to not portray the character with his trademark gun in order to make him seem more “inviting and approachable.” Of course, that decision only strengthens the argument that this statue is more representative of RoboCop as pop culture figure rather than the original version of the character. And for those who like to split hairs (this is the internet after all), it should be noted that the original RoboCop was largely filmed in Dallas, Texas, with many of the movie’s only real depictions of Detroit largely coming via overhead shots. Of course, Detroit as it was in the ’80s is undoubtedly a vital piece of the original movie’s narrative and atmosphere. [end-mark] The post Nearly 15 Years Later, the Detroit <i>RoboCop</i> Statue Has Finally Found a Home appeared first on Reactor.