Were you thinking that you weren’t going to check out Jose Padilha‘s remake of Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop because a) remakes turn you off or b) this year’s Total Recall remake was so bad or c) you don’t like that Joel Kinnaman character (tangentially, you might also not like The Killing or even Snabba Cash)? Well, guess what, your reasons for derision no longer have any basis, because the film has now hired a new villain (post-Hugh Laurie shove-off) that’s so deliciously wonderful that, when we say that somebody must have asked for it, we mean that somebody brilliant must have asked for it.
The new CEO of the evil OmniCorp, Raymond Sellars? Michael Keaton. Boom. Buy your ticket now.
Variety’s Jeff Sneider first tweeted the news, and Deadline Hollywood followed shortly thereafter with a statement from Padilha, who said: “Michael is the final addition to the amazing cast we have assembled for this film and it is so great to have the last puzzle piece in place. It is thrilling that everything has come together to bring this innovative new vision of RoboCop to life. We’ve got a great script, a great cast, some killer ED-209’s and I can’t wait to get Alex Murphy back on the streets.”
RoboCop is set to arrive in theaters on August 9, 2013.