DETROIT — RoboCop has finally found a permanent home in Detroit.<\/p>\n
A statue looming 11 feet tall (3.3 meters) and weighing 3,500 pounds (1,587 kilograms) began standing guard over the Motor City on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was snowstorm, dark and below 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-1.1 degree Celsius) and there was a steady stream of people driving by,\u201d after it was erected, said Jim Toscano, co-owner of the FREE AGE film production company where the bronze-cast statue now stands bolted into a concrete patio. \u201cYou can walk right up to and walk all the way around it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It took about 15 years before the idea finally found a home<\/a>, and almost four decades since the popular science fiction film \u201cRoboCop\u201d hit theaters in 1987.<\/p>\n Set in what was supposed to be the near-future, it portrayed Detroit as crime-ridden and poorly protected by a beleaguered and outgunned police force, until actor Peter Weller appeared as a nearly invincible cyborg, created by a nefarious corporation that was bent on privatizing policing.<\/p>\n \u201cRoboCop\u201d developed a cult following, spawning two sequels and a reboot.<\/p>\n A statue campaign appears to have started around 2010 when Detroit Mayor Dave Bing was tagged in a tweet that noted Philadelphia’s statue of boxer Rocky Balboa and said RoboCop would be a \u201cGREAT ambassador for Detroit.\u201d <\/p>\n Bing tweeted back, saying there were no such plans. But some Detroiters ran with the idea, crowdfunding it through a 2012 Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $67,000 from more than 2,700 backers worldwide, and Detroit sculptor Giorgio Gikas finished the statue in 2017. <\/p>\n Then, it got stuck, stored away from public view.<\/p>\n