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.

Deadline reports that Keaton will star in RoboCop as the villain, a role that was previously thought to go to Clive Owen after Laurie had passed. Here’s what the director had to say about the veteran actor joining his production:

“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.”

Some of that cast Padilha mentioned includes Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman and Abbie Cornish. The picture is set to start production next month with a release date scheduled for August 9th, 2013. Be sure to keep up with our continuing coverage of the RoboCop remake as production moves along.