‘Robocop’ remake marketing starts two months before production

A remake of the sci-fi action movie “Robocop” that doesn’t start production until September and won’t hit theaters until August 2013 has already kicked off its marketing campaign online.

A new website for the film’s fictional corporation Omnicorp launched over the weekend and immediately went viral. It features a fake sales video that serves as a teaser trailer of sorts for the picture, showing the company’s ability to make a variety of high-tech law enforcement products, including the RC-2000, “where human resources meets robotic engineering.”

Fans of the 1987 original film know Omni as the evil megacorporation whose creations include Robocop, code-named RC-2000. The video also depicts ED-209, Robocop’s mechanical enemy, and a line of flying drones that monitor criminal activity.

While it’s not unusual to kick off promotional campaigns with digital content designed to go viral, “Robocop” is starting particularly early, more than a year before the film appears in theaters. In addition, since the movie doesn’t even begin shooting until the first week of September, there are no images or footage to show the public.

According to “legal” information at the bottom of the Omnicorp site, it was created by Sony Pictures digital, the studio’s online marketing arm. “Robocop” is being produced by the recently revitalized Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which came out of bankruptcy in late 2010, but Sony is co-financing the movie and will handle worldwide distribution and marketing.

Directed by Brazilian filmmaker Jose Padilha in his Hollywood debut, “Robocop” stars Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson and Joel Kinnaman as the title character. The original movie grossed $53.4 million in the U.S. and Canada in 1987.

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