Edward Neumeier (born 1957) is a screenwriter best known for his work on the science fiction movies RoboCop and Starship Troopers. He wrote the latter's sequel, and is currently writing and directing Starship Troopers 3: Marauder.
Neumeier studied journalism at the University of California Santa Cruz before attending the School of Motion Picture and Television at UCLA. After graduation, he quickly found work in Hollywood: first as a production assistant on the television series Taxi; then as a reader for Paramount and Columbia; and finally as a junior executive at Universal Pictures.
At this time, Neumeier wrote his first outlines and treatments of RoboCop, as well as a number of "spec" scripts. Declining an offer of vice-presidency at Universal, he instead elected to further develop RoboCop with his writing partner Michael Miner.
The screenplay, a violent corporate satire whose pop culture forebears seemed to include comic book icons Iron Man and Judge Dredd, was picked up by Orion Pictures and greenlit with a budget of less than $15 million and Dutch director Paul Verhoeven attached. Neumeier co-produced the film, which was released in 1987. The film was a major success, earning over $50 million at the American box office. It also spawned two sequels, and two TV series (one animated), mostly without the involvement of the original's creators.
The first sequel, RoboCop 2, was originally to be written by Neumeier. He had written a first draft of RoboCop 2 when an industry-wide writers' strike lasting several months prevented Neumeier from developing his screenplay any further. Orion Pictures subsequently hired comic book artist Frank Miller to develop his own original screenplay for the film.
Ten years after the first RoboCop, Neumeier and Verhoeven re-teamed for the film Starship Troopers, from a screenplay by Neumeier (working this time without a co-writer) loosely based upon Robert A. Heinlein's novel. The film had a budget of $98.7 million, at that time making it the highest budgeted movie ever green-lit in Hollywood. Another violent satire in the fashion of Robocop, Starship Troopers was appreciated more in Europe than in America (where it earned a disappointing $54 million theatrically), although the prestigious Artforum magazine voted the film one of the "10 most artistic achievements of 1997". Neumeier also briefly appeared in the film as a man accused of murder and sentenced to death.
