RoboCop is another of MGM's big remakes, or rather reboots, that it is settings its sights high. Although it initially lost Darren Aronofsky as director the announcement that José Padilha was taking the chair was no less exciting, well not for me anyway, and the exciting news for the production just keeps coming.

The cast is expanding and the names piling on board are reinforcing MGM's stance for the film, this isn't just another cheap remake or reboot churning out to a PG-13 audience, this is going to be a high profile reboot following in the steps of Total Recall.

So we know that the excellent José Padilha is directing the film, and his previous experience should count for a lot considering he brought us Ônibus 174 (Bus 174) (Filmstalker review), Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite) (Filmstalker review) and Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (Filmstalker review).

We also know that Joel Kinnaman from The Killing is going to play Alex Murphy, the man who is turned into RoboCop partly in order to save his life, but really to help a corporation bring to life the programme of cyborg policemen. Murphy is the prototype.

Following that news we heard that Gary Oldman was cast as the scientist who creates RoboCop, Samuel L. Jackson was to be playing a media mogul and Abbie Cornish is being mentioned as starring too. Already the cast is sounding superb, so why not throw in another name?

The Hollywood Reporter has news that another name is in negotiations to join the film, Hugh Laurie has finished with House so he's going to play a villain in RoboCop, probably the head of the corporation who is looking to pervert the use of RoboCop and that's exactly what the word is as the article tells us he's playing the evil and very rich CEO of Omnicorp.

So far it's sounding like all the roles are in place to give us the story we've seen before, but maybe there's more to come from the plot. We'll have to wait and see.