Jose Padilha had some things to say about the RoboCop remake recently, but despite his feelings of frustration, he was still adament the movie would be great. Thanks to the news coming out of Deadline that Michael Keaton is joining the film, we now have one more solid reason to think he might be right.
Keaton, who is perhaps best known as Beetlejuice or Tim Burton’s Batman, will be taking over the role of Raymond Sellars, the CEO of the company responsible for creating RoboCop (played here by Joel Kinnaman of The Killing).
The Sellars role was originally meant to be played by Hugh Laurie, before he had to pull out of production. Still, as good as Laurie would have been, Keaton has a wild streak and a way of delivering rapid-fire dialogue that makes me think this could be a good move.
Of the change, Padilha had this to say:
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 scheduled to be released August 9, 2013, with Keaton and Kinnaman being joined by Samuel L. Jackson, Jay Baruchel, Abbie Cornish, and Gary Oldman.
As a general rule, I’m not a fan of remakes of pretty much perfect movies, but based on the cast and crew alone I can’t see much to knock this one about.
How about you?
