While things haven’t exactly been going smoothly for director Jose Padilha’s RoboCop reboot lately, the acquisition of Michael Keaton (Batman) as the villain will surely go a long way to remedy that.  Hugh Laurie (House, M.D.) was previously attached to play the antagonist but talks recently broke down.  Keaton would be playing Raymond Sellars, the CEO of Omnicorp, the corporation that builds RoboCop.  The reboot of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 cult classic stars Joel Kinnaman in the title role.  Hit the jump for more on the remake and to read what Padilha had to say about Keaton coming on board. 

Though production has yet to beging, things aren’t exactly looking up for MGM’s RoboCop remake.  Earlier this month, HitFix’s Drew McWheeny got his hands on a copy of the script and gave it a rather scathing review, and just last week we learned that talks with Hugh Laurie to play the film’s villain broke down.  Now word comes that director Jose Padilha isn’t exactly having an easy time getting his vision across.  He’s apparently having to fight for every idea he has, and most of what he wants is being turned down by the studio.  Hit the jump for more.

The script for the RoboCop remake may have gotten panned, but the movie still has an incredibly strong cast: Joel Kinnaman, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Jay Baruchel, Abbie Cornish, Michael K. Williams, and Jackie Earle Haley.  We previously reported that Hugh Laurie was in negotiations to play the film’s villain, but now Variety’s Jeff Sneider is tweeting that Laurie won’t be squaring off against the cyborg police officer.  According to Sneider, Laurie was never really “in” since he was still in negotiations for the part, and those talks have now fallen apart.  It’s a bit of a bummer since I’d like to see more Laurie especially now that House, M.D. is over, but hopefully he’ll land another big role soon.

RoboCop is set to open on August 9, 2013. [Update: Deadline reports that MGM is now looking at a small group of actors to fill the villain role, and one of them includes Clive Owen.]

I tend to stay away from script reviews.  Scripts go through multiple revisions, the movie can then undergo changes while filming, and then it can be further revised in the editing room.  The script is rarely a bible where every sentence and plot beat has to be followed to the letter.  That being said, I trust the word of HitFix‘s Drew McWeeny.  He’s covered this business for well over a decade, and he’s also worked as a screenwriter.  So when he went on Twitter yesterday and took apart the script for the RoboCop remake, it’s worth our attention.  To put it as lightly as humanly possible, Mr. McWeeny did not care for the screenplay.

Hit the jump for what he had to tweet about the script.  The film, directed by Jose Padilha (The Elite Squad) stars Joel Kinnaman, Hugh Laurie, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Jay Baruchel, Abbie Cornish, Michael K. Williams, and Jackie Earle Haley.  RoboCop opens August 9, 2013.

RoboCop and Nicole Holofcener have nothing in common… until now!

• The Wire breakout star Michael Kenneth Williams is in talks to join Joel Kinnaman, Hugh Laurie, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Jay Baruchel, Abbie Cornish, and Jackie Earle Haley in the Robocop remake.
• Holofcener cast Catherine Keener, Toni Collette, Ben Falcone, and Eve Hewson in supporting roles in her next movie.  Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and James Gandolfini star.

Hit the jump for details on both projects.

We’ve got a few big names for some big projects in casting news today, so let’s get to it:

• Jon Favreau is set to join director Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the adaptation of Jordan Belfort’s memoir.
• Liev Schreiber is on board for Lee Daniels’ The Butler, the biopic of longtime White House staffer, Eugene Allen.  The picture already sports an impressive cast, featuring Forest Whitaker, David Oyelowo, and Oprah Winfrey as the three leads.
• We previously reported that Jay Baruchel was circling a role in the RoboCop reboot by Elite Squad director, Jose Padilha.  New details have now emerged for his possible character.

Hit the jump for more information on each casting assignment.

Jackie Earle Haley is joining director Jose Padilha’s RoboCop remake.  Joel Kinnaman is set as the titular police officer who becomes a cybernetically-enhanced justice dealer following mortal injuries, and now Deadline reports that Haley will play Maddox, the man who “dispense the military training to RoboCop.”  Moreover, Jay Baruchel is apparently circling another lead role.  These actors make yet even more fantastic additions to an impressive cast that now includes Hugh Laurie as the antagonist, Gary Oldman as the scientist who creates RoboCop, Samuel L. Jackson as a charismatic TV mogul, and Abbie Cornish as Kinnaman’s wife.

Production on RoboCop is poised to begin soon in order to meet its August 9th, 2013 release date.  Hit the jump to read the synopsis for the redo.

We knew that RoboCop was getting a hard reset with the upcoming reboot starring Joel Kinnaman, but thanks to a new press release, we now have some details about the plot itself.  The original 1987 Paul Verhoeven picture starred Peter Weller as a cybernetically-enhanced super-cop who dealt swift justice in Detroit.  The new version keeps the same city and the same nucleus of the story, but introduces new elements.  From director Jose Padilha, RoboCop, also starring Gary Oldman, Hugh Laurie, Abbie Cornish and Samuel L. Jackson, opens August 9th, 2013.  Hit the jump to read the full press release.

Though Comic-Con 2012 doesn’t officially begin until tonight, plenty of posters, banners, props, etc. are already blanketing downtown San Diego.  We’ve already shared a bunch of random images from around the city, a vehicle from Elysium, and a bevy of images of all the Batmobiles from movies past and present.  Steve recently ran down to the convention center itself and snapped some pictures of some really cool poster banners that are hanging up.  Included after the jump is our first look at the Evil Dead remake (produced by Sam Raimi), the Carrie remake starring Chloe Moretz, and posters for HBO’s Game of Thrones, Showtime’s Homeland (not without a sense of humor), Rian Johnson’s Looper, and Elysium, as well as a viral teaser poster for the Robocop remake.

Hit the jump to check out the images, and be sure to keep an eye on Collider over the next few days for our full coverage from Comic-Con. [Disclaimer: Sony has informed us that the Omnicorp Robocop artwork is not official]

Easy Money (aka Snabba Cash), from director Daniel Espinosa (Safe House), is a Swedish crime thriller based on the international best-selling novel by Jens Lapidus, now being presented in the U.S. by Martin Scorsese.  The story follows JW (Joel Kinnaman), a lower-class business student living a double life with Stockholm’s wealthy elite.  To keep up his lifestyle, he finds himself in deep with the dark world of organized crime and in an intensely dramatic struggle for life and death.

For the film’s press day, Collider spoke to actor Joel Kinnaman (The Killing), in both a roundtable and a 1-on-1 interview, about what it’s like to finally have U.S. audiences get to see the 2010 film, his desire to tell stories in the moral grey zone, how he finally ended up landing the role of JW, and what he finds most appealing about acting.  He also talked about taking on a film with as much attention as the RoboCop re-imagining, how proud he is to have the opportunity to work with Gary Oldman, how surreal it is that the film already has a viral campaign, that he wants to do as much of his stunts as he can, how he felt about the Season 2 finale of his AMC drama series The Killing, and his hopes for a Season 3.  Check out what he had to say after the jump.

With Comic-Con about to begin, many of the studios have already plastered posters over buses, walls, and inside hotel elevators to try and promote their upcoming wares.  While the majority of what’s coming will be set up tomorrow, after the jump you can get a sneak peak of what’s already on display including Game of Thrones, Syfy’s Defiance, Black Dynamite, Frankenweenie, Grimm, Looper, the remake of Robocop, Total Recall, Wreck-it-Ralph, True Blood, and more.

However, while all the marketing materials are cool, my favorite image has nothing to with your favorite movie or TV show.  Instead it’s a piece of street art telling us not to believe the hype.  It’s very well done and definitely worth checking out.

There is a new viral site for the Robocop remake devoted to the diverse product line of Omnicorp, the corporation in the business of making your city safe again.  In the video that greets you when you enter the site, Omnicorp is especially proud of the RC-2000: “Where human resources meets robotic engineering.  The RC-2000: the next generation in defensive products.”  The clip gives you the briefest glimpse of the new design for the RoboCop suit Joel Kinnaman will sport in the new movie.

Hugh Laurie was tapped to play the CEO of Omnicorp, the villain of the film, so Omnicorp is set up to become one of the better evil movie corporations in recent years.  Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Abbie Cornish also star in the remake, directed by José Padilha.  Unfortunately, I get an “Access Denied” message when I try to click on too many links at the official site, but I imagine more content will be added in the months leading up to the August 9, 2013 release of Robocop.  Hit the jump to watch the introduction video.

In an awesomely developing story, Hugh Laurie (House, M.D.) is in talks to play a villain in Jose Padilha’s upcoming Robocop reboot.  The former sarcastic doctor on Fox’s long-running series is in negotiations to play a cold, sarcastic CEO of Omnicorp, a mega-corporation responsible for the creation of Robocop.  Laurie certainly has the swagger to play a CEO and I’m thrilled at the prospect of him playing a villain.  Details are scarce at the moment, but it seems as if his character would be similar to the one played by Ronny Cox in the 1987 Paul Verhoeven original.  Hit the jump for more.

The 2012 Licensing Expo is currently underway in Las Vegas, and it’s brought the first looks at some posters for 2013 and 2014′s major films.  It’s also brought the announcement of Rio 2, which shouldn’t be too surprising since the original film grossed $484 million worldwide.  The Expo also showed off a nice, detailed look at some of the costumes from Zack Snyder‘s Superman reboot, Man of Steel.

Hit the jump for a first look at a gallery of the posters, which also includes R.I.P.D., Jurassic Park 3D, Robocop, Cloudy 2: Revenge of the Leftovers, After Earth, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, Epic, and Iron Man 3.

Update: We’ve now got video of the Man of Steel costumes.

Casting for the Robocop remake is moving right along, and hot off the heels of yesterday’s news that Samuel L. Jackson is in talks to join director Jose Padilha’s redo comes word that Abbie Cornish (Sucker Punch) may sign on as the film’s female lead.  The Killing star Joel Kinnaman is set as the titular star, a cop who—following an incident on duty—is remade as the robot infused supercop.  Deadline reports that Cornish has been offered the role of Kinnaman’s wife, who thinks she is a widow.  Cornish would make yet another swell addition to an increasingly impressive cast, as Gary Oldman is set to play the scientist who is responsible for creating Robocop.

Production on the film begins in September, and Kinnaman recently described this new version of the Paul Verhoeven sci-fi classic as “a new story within the old one,” so it certainly sounds like we’re in for something other than a paint-by-numbers rehash of the original film.  Cornish will next be seen in In Bruges director Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths with Colin Farrell and Sam Rockwell.