Oh, the trades. In their eternal pissing match to shout "first!" or "toldja!" some irritating practices have come into play of late which finds them making sure they toss every little morsel of info they have out there — even it means burying it in other stories — or hitting Twitter with their "news," all so they can trumpet that they were there before everyone else. At any rate, it seems Jeff Sneider at Variety was feeling a little burned that Deadline got the news that Liam Neeson and Russell Crowe were being eyed for Darren Aronofsky's "Noah" so late last night he tweeted that the latter was also in the mix for a big franchise reboot.
"Sure, Russell Crowe, MIGHT star in Aronofsky's NOAH… but do you know what else he MIGHT star in? Three words: Ro. Bo. Cop. #FloatThisBoat" he tweeted. At any rate, for anyone who might have thought that Crowe was no longer as a big player in Hollywood as he might have been a few years ago, it appears that's not the case. And while hot young things like Michael Fassbender and Chris Pine who were tossed around at various points might be fun ideas, they still don't quite have the name recognition and clout an Oscar winner like Crowe brings to the table. This also suggests that the character of RoboCop could be skewing older.
Or it could mean nothing at all. This is probably just a prelude to the inevitable shortlist story, so just brace yourself. At any rate, for someone like Crowe to even sign on, he'll probably want to flip through the script that "Gran Torino" scribe Nick Schenk is rewriting first. But Crowe as RoboCop? Considering he's gotten over his fear of franchise movies with his appearance as Jor-El in "Man Of Steel," yeah, we could see it being a possibility. Jose Padilha will direct the film, which MGM hopes to get in front of cameras this summer.