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(Photo: Detroit News video screenshot)
Ten years after a crowdsourcing campaign raised money for a Detroit RoboCop statue, the two-ton bronze work is complete and ready to stand guard in the city — though it does not yet have a home.
An update on the art piece and a nostalgic dive into how it came to be land the cover of this week's issue of the Metro Times. The campaign led by filmmaker Brandon Walley and Loveland Technologies CEO Jerry Paffendorf raised $67,000 from 2,700 people across the globe, money that went toward commissioning Venus Bronze Works' Giorgio Gikas to make the statue.
The biggest sticking point, until now, was reportedly securing approval from MGM, which owns rights to the "RoboCop" movie.
The statue was to find a home at the Michigan Science Center, but that's scrapped for financial reasons, the museum told Metro Times in a statement.
"We are thankful to the Imagination Station team and their partners for including the Michigan Science Center in the RoboCop statue journey. Working with Imagination Station in 2018, MiSci, a private non-profit museum that receives no city, state or federal operating funding, had planned to install the 11-foot-tall bronze sculpture adjacent to the Center in conjunction with improvements to our grounds. But, given the pandemic's unprecedented pressures, MiSci's resources must now be entirely focused on our core mission of serving Michigan's students and families.
"The creation of the bronze work, which combines centuries-old metalworking techniques with 21st-century technology, remains an amazing STEM story. As Michigan's STEM hub, MiSci hopes to be able to support Imagination Station in the search for a new and appropriate home for this iconic work."
Wherever it lands, the statue will possess a m ore peaceful quality than the 1987 movie character who inspired it: Venus Bronze Works designed the piece so it's not holding a gun, MLive reports.