{"id":171687,"date":"2025-12-07T07:31:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T07:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/171687\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T07:31:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T07:31:14","slug":"robocop-statue-installed-in-detroit-after-nearly-15-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/171687\/","title":{"rendered":"RoboCop statue installed in Detroit after nearly 15 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dec. 5 (UPI) — An 11-foot-tall bronze statue of science fiction hero RoboCop has been installed in Detroit after nearly 15 years of planning.<\/p>\n

The 2.5-ton sculpture, which depicts RoboCop as portrayed by actor Peter Weller<\/a> in the eponymous 1987 film, was installed Wednesday outside the Free Age Production Studio in Detroit’s Eastern Market.\n<\/p>\n

“I love it,” Jim Toscano, owner of Free Age Production Studio, told MLive<\/a>. “It looks great, it’s super impressive and it has already brought a lot of nice people around.”<\/p>\n

The story of the statue began in 2011<\/a>, when then-Detroit Mayor Dave Bing<\/a> responded to a tweet suggesting the city erect a statue of RoboCop. Bing said in the now-deleted tweet that there were “no plans” to install such a statue, but the exchange sparked the launch of a fan-led<\/a> campaign to make the artwork a reality.<\/p>\n

Brandon Walley, board president of the community arts group Imagination Station, and Jerry Paffendorf, co-founder and CEO of Loveland Technologies, launched a Kickstarter campaign that raised $67,436 toward the effort.<\/p>\n

The statue was crafted by<\/a> Detroit sculptor Giorgio Gikas and completed in 2017, but placement continued to face delays from issues including legal clearance from MGM, which holds the rights to the character.\n<\/p>\n

Walley said now that the statue is finally in place, plans are being started for an official welcome ceremony that will hopefully include an appearance by Weller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dec. 5 (UPI) — An 11-foot-tall bronze statue of science fiction hero RoboCop has been installed in Detroit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,110956,501,156,5593,111,139,69,5591,110955,5592],"class_list":{"0":"post-171687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-dave-bing","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-funny","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-newzealand","18":"tag-nz","19":"tag-odd","20":"tag-peter-weller","21":"tag-weird"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}