Prime Video Has Found The Boys' Replacement In New Dark Sci-Fi Series

Published Aug 10, 2026, 6:30 PM EDT Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel. Amazon Prime Video has a new science fiction series on the way, and it might be the perfect replacement for The Boys now that the dark superhero show has ended. The Boys was probably the biggest show Prime Video has had, and it's going to take some time before it has another series with the same levels of viewership. Prime hasn't been asleep at the wheel, though, and has been acquiring some major IP in the 2020s. Warhammer 40K and James Bond are some of the big titles recently placed under the Prime umbrella, and in 2026, Prime added another major franchise to its pipeline. Robocop (spelled "RoboCop" in the film franchise) is set to be an 8-episode series based on the film series of the same name, which began with Paul Verhoeven's 1987 movie. Peter Ocko will serve as showrunner, and Blumhouse Atomic Monster, James Wan and Jason Blum's merged company, will produce. It's not entirely clear what the series will be about, but from the descriptions from Amazon, it sounds like Robocop will be a combination of the original storyline, with new elements. For those unfamiliar with the RoboCop franchise, this new series could be an answer to what comes next for Amazon. RoboCop Is Already A Dark, Satirical Science Fiction Franchise Orion Pictures The RoboCop franchise is best defined by the film that kicked everything off. In 1987, Verhoeven directed RoboCop, an original science fiction action film set in a near-future version of Detroit where crime is rampant, and the police are helpless. Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is one of the city's few good cops. He's rewarded for his efforts by being shot to pieces by a notorious gang. What's left of his body is used for the novel RoboCop program, where his corpse is converted into a cyborg police officer with no memories, primed with directives to protect the public and uphold the law. In the same way as The Boys, RoboCop is hilariously violent. It would be shocking and upsetting if it weren't so over the top, and like The Boys, it's not violence for the sake of violence. RoboCop is a savvy satire, and a dark one at that. The Boys success came from diving into that same tone of satire, and Robocop could repeat that success. RoboCop, on the surface, is a classic sci-fi shoot-em-up. If you only saw the cover at your local VHS rental store in the '90s, you would be forgiven for thinking it was a Terminator rip-off. There's a lot more going on in the franchise than that. RoboCop is a harsh critique of corporate capitalism, authority, and what it means to be a man. It also contends with tricky philosophical questions about death, what it means to be a human, and how important memories are to developing a sense of self. There is a lot to explore in the world of RoboCop, but Verhoeven made sure that the tone of the franchise was always more winking than sincere. That tone is going to be crucial for the series, and according to Amazon, the show will have similar sensibilities to Verhoeven's film. That satire has already proven to be a success with The Boys, as the show also tackled themes of capitalism, the American government, and our obssesion with power and authority. If Robocop sticks to the roots of the franchise, it could find a similar audience to the one that The Boys had. Showrunner Peter Ocko Writers Peter Ocko