Prime Video's Sci-Fi Reboot Will Be The 'Reacher Meets Terminator' Show You Never Knew You Wanted

1 week ago 9

Published Jul 23, 2026, 11:32 AM EDT

Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel.

Amazon Prime Video is rebooting a beloved science fiction franchise that's a little like Reacher meets Terminator. Prime Video has not been passive when it comes to accumulating IP, securing deals for The Lord of the Rings, Warhammer 40,000, and the James Bond franchise all in the last few years.

One of the younger streaming services is also one of the richest, a fact of it being an arm of Amazon.com, Inc. There's not a lot that Amazon can't purchase if it sets its mind to it. Bad news for those uneasy about corporate consolidation, great news for people hoping for high-budget shows, movies, and reboots.

In July 2026, Prime Video announced another big franchise reboot, Robocop, an upcoming eight-episode series from Blumhouse Atomic Monster productions. Peter Ocko will serve as showrunner, while Atomic Monster founder and director James Wan is set to serve as an executive producer.

Robocop (spelled with a lowercase "c" for the show title rather than the uppercase "C" in the movie title) will tell a fresh story, set within the universe of RoboCop, but will still retain the ethos and ideas of the film franchise. For the uninitiated, the RoboCop franchise began in 1987 with Paul Verhoeven's hyperviolent science fiction action film.

Set in a near-future, dystopian Detroit, police officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is brutally murdered and dismembered by a criminal gang. His body is used for the experimental RoboCop program, which transforms Murphy into a heavily armored cyborg programmed to uphold the law at the cost of his memories.

RoboCop is meant to be watched as a satire, blending more genres than you might initially think. It's clever with its examinations of privatization, corporate greed, and philosophy about self, but it still leaves room for an exciting, thrilling action tale. However, what's come after that first film has not quite held up to the original. Hopefully, that won't be the case for Amazon's Robocop.

Prime Video's Robocop Can Save The Struggling Live-Action Franchise

RoboCop (Peter Weller) removes his helmet to look at Alex Murphy's reflection in RoboCop

After RoboCop came RoboCop 2 in 1990, RoboCop 3 in 1993, and the RoboCop remake in 2014. Those three films earned mixed to bad reviews and are far below the original in quality. Then there were the many TV adaptations of the franchise, beginning with the one-season RoboCop in 1988.

A second RoboCop premiered in 1994, this time with 21 episodes vs the original's 12, but still with only one season. In 1998, there was RoboCop: Alpha Commando, and in 2001 there was RoboCop: Prime Directives. As you may have guessed, none of these shows held a candle to the original film.

RoboCop is the strange, extremely recognizable franchise, with barely any actually good entries in it. All the love for the series, the memorable lines, the classic characters, they all come from the first RoboCop; and maybe the second one if you dig deep through it to find the few gems.

Robocop on Amazon Prime, therefore, has to change the perception of an entire franchise, no easy task. However, this also means that if Robocop is even a serviceable TV show, it could rocket up to the second-best installment in the nearly 40-year-old franchise.