House out, Beetlejuice in…
After a rocky road on the set of ROBOCOP culminated in the departure of Hugh Laurie last week, word is Michael Keaton has come in to assume the villainous role of Raymond Sellars. I for one prefer the replacement, if only a little. Keaton’s been a childhood favorite, and anytime the dude gets a chance to go ham on a bad guy…it’s on!
In RoboCop, the year is 2029 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. Their drones are winning American wars around the globe and now they want to bring this technology to the home front. Alex Murphy is a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit. After he is critically injured in the line of duty, OmniCorp utilizes their remarkable science of robotics to save Alex’s life. He returns to the streets of his beloved city with amazing new abilities, but with issues a regular man has never had to face before.
Keaton will play Raymond Sellars, the evil and ultra-rich CEO of Omnicorp, the company that makes Robocop.
He joins Joel Kinnaman, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Jay Baruchel, Jennifer Ehle, Abbie Cornish (below), Michael Kenneth Williams, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Jackie Earle Haley in the flick – which comes out next August.