First Look At Our Robot Replacements from The Surrogates

The new science fiction movie The Surrogates is filming in the Boston area, and we've gotten some exclusive pics — including some images of the movie's robot replacement bodies. In The Surrogates, humanity has turned hermit, thanks to robot bodies that can be your representatives in the world. Your robot copy can do the annoying errands or spend quality time with your girlfriend, whilst you wallow in your own filth in front of Grand Theft Auto 9: Lunar Streets. More photos of robot parts, plus one set photo, after the jump. Also we clear up those rumors about the movie's star, Bruce Willis, and his weird hairpiece.

Bob Britt owner of the custom body shop Atlantic Customs, in Peabody, MA, was called in to create the robot extras before they have their skin put on. He used a mix of paint and vinyl on the mannequins to give them the appearance of shiny new droids. "We painted mannequins to look like the robots before they take on human skin. We were doing most of the background robots. We took pretty high line department store mannequins and painted them with a metallic structure or with muscle tissue. They're basically the robots before they get the human flesh, hair and eyes. They're silver and gold, and we gave them a green shading to give them a realistic look. I think they are replicas of the original robot [prop]."

After working for a few days, Britt has built a complete body of one robot, minus the head and a collection of robot appendages. His robot parts will appear in the background of a scene that takes place in a laboratory where the robots are built. "They should get a lot of good screen time because they are going to do a lot of shoots in the lab mock up," he adds.

Although Britt was only privy to the bare minimum on the plot of the movie he has his own theories on how his work will be used and what's been going on in his hometown, "What I gathered from working on it, is that it's a movie based on these surrogate robots that you have built of yourself when you get old, fat, lazy and you can't do anything anymore. You get a surrogate robot made. The robot is an exact copy of the person, so other people can't tell if it's a robot or if it's a human. I think one of the robots goes haywire, or they all do. There's a lot of military stuff there, a lot of people in camouflage and a few military motorcycles. At least that's what I'm gathering because there is a big chase scene with one of the robots. So I'm guessing that, that robot went crazy. It sounds like a typical robot movie, where you shouldn't mess with human nature. But that's my take, I have very limited information."

The official synopsis for the film says that Willis' character is a cop, or FBI agent, who ventures out of his house in the flesh to investigate a murder, in a time when almost no human ever goes out any more.

As far as other on set rumors there was a casting call in April for young and sexy surrogates. Sources reveal to us the set will [and has been] populated with beautiful people, since the surrogates are supposed to be like perfect humans.

All around Massachusetts filming sets the crew has posted direction signs with "VSI" in big bold letters. If you read the books the company that creates the Surrogates is called Virtual Self Inc. Obviously these signs are a shout-out to the company and a way to throw off any unwanted attention by not using the movie's real name. Tricky, tricky Disney. The comic was also known for including Virtual Self advertisements through the pages of its books.

In hair news, Bruce Willis has been spotted on set in the town of Worcester covering his shiny noggin with a blond wig. Our sources tell us that this is one of two looks for Willis in the movie. Willis is the man who made bald cool, so I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about this. But then again it is the future, and if they can make robot duplicates of people, surely they've fixed male pattern baldness as well. Or maybe his perfect robot version of himself has blond hair. If that's the case, then shame on you, Willis!

Send an email to Meredith, the author of this post, at meredith@io9.com.