Edward Neumeier

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edward Neumeier is a screenwriter best known for his work on the science fiction movies RoboCop (with Michael Miner) and Starship Troopers. He is writing and directing Starship Troopers 3.

Ed, also credited as Ed Neumeier, was a production assistant, reader, and then creative executive at Columbia Pictures and Universal Pictures before beginning to write his first outlines and treatments of ROBOCOP. He declined an offer from his boss to become a Vice President and elected to leave Universal to pursue his development of the script for ROBOCOP (the first) with writing partner Michael Miner.

Ed had actually written a very few previous "spec" scripts in his past, none of which were much circulated in Hollywood, so that his ROBOCOP screenplay seemed to appear quite suddenly from this undeniably new talent.

But the ROBOCOP script was undeniably compelling; the film was aggressively original though it took flavorings from comic books like IRON MAN and JUDGE DREDD along the route, then abandoned some of them, particularly an early subplot in which the horribly wounded character of Murphy would have become an alcoholic before finding his calling as a Law Enforcement Cyborg. The script was picked up by Orion Pictures -- with a budget less than $15 million -- by then-company-head Mike Medavoy, and director Paul Verhoeven (previously acclaimed mostly for his award-winning foreign film SOLDIER OF ORANGE) attached.

During production of ROBOCOP on locations like Dallas, Texas, it was not certain to anyone whether Verhoeven's vision, or the production budget, would support Neumeier's ambitious vision for the story. The release of the film dispelled those anxieties. ROBOCOP became not only a certifiable hit, but a household name still in use today (ROBO-this and ROBO-that populate American commercial product lines). It also propelled a number of actors and other principals to relative stardom in the Hollywood industry.