Back in August, we told you about an alarming development involving the upcoming director’s cut of Rocky IV, which director/star Sylvester Stallone has been editing during the pandemic. Stallone claimed he had grown weary of Paulie’s Robot from the film, and that he was removing him entirely from the director’s cut. “I don’t like the robot anymore,” he told one fan on Instagram, adding “The robot is going to the junkyard forever.”

If you are upset about this devastating news, just imagine how the creator of the robot feels. His name is Robert Doornick, and he built the ’bot to work with austistic children. That was how Stallone initially found it; one of his children is autistic, and he contacted Doornick to see if his son could meet Doornick’s robot, who is named Sico. Stallone was impressed enough to add him to Rocky IV, where he was Rocky’s gift to Paulie on his birthday.

Decades later, Empire tracked down Doornick, and got his reaction to the brewing controversy around his creation. He told them:

I was deluged with messages: ‘How can Stallone do that?’ But I know why he’s doing it, because I know he loves the robot. By causing turmoil among the fans of Sico, it generates more publicity. And by removing the robot from the movie, it saves money in royalty fees, because he is a member of the Screen Actors Guild. Sico receives cheques all the time – and of course he sends them over to me.

How much could a fake robot be getting in SAG royalties? Is that really a thing? I’m in the wrong line of work.

When we first posted about this terrible story, we noted that Stallone has more footage of Paulie’s Robot than he used in the theatrical cut. We demanded at that time that he put more of Sico into the film, and #ReleaseThePauliesRobotCut. Today we are renewing our call to action. This footage must be seen by the entire world. In a year this terrible, we cannot endure another tragedy like this.

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