For years there was talk of Darren Aronofsky taking the reigns of the Robocop franchise and directing a reboot. These talks continued for years and years and anytime Aronofsky would make a movie that wasn't Robocop related, the press would ask him about it. Now Aronofsky has been put in charge of the next Wolverine movie and MGM desperately needs to fill its slate with projects that will help it get back to where it used to be. So guess what? The Robocop reboot is back on and the studio may have found its director.

Deadline reports that Jose Padilha, the Brazilian director who recently won over Sundance Film Festival crowds with his film Elite Squad 2, has now entered talks to be the director of the next Robocop movie. For those uninitiated, the original film, directed by Paul Verhoeven in 1987, starred Peter Weller as a cop who is turned into a cyborg after a group of criminals put him on his death bed. The movie spawned two sequels, a television series and a mini-series, none of which were viewed as being on par with the original's success.

Talk about good timing. Apparently all MGM needed to get the project going was to have legions of geeks fight to get a statue of the hero built in Detroit. I've sadly never seen a Padilha film, though he is incredibly popular in Brazil, his most recent film out-grossing Avatar, Shrek Forever and Alice in Wonderland. It will be interesting to see what he can do with the project.