On the heels of last week's announcement that Hugh Laurie had dropped out of Jose Padilha's RoboCop reboot comes word, via Deadline, that Michael Keaton has stepped in to play the role of Raymond Sellars, the evil and ultra-rich CEO of Omnicorp.

Keaton will be joining a cast that includes Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, Jackie Earle Haley, Jay Baruchel, Jennifer Ehle, Michael Kenneth Williams and Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

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.

RoboCop is planned to hit theaters on August 9, 2013.

(Photo Credit: Drew Altizer / WENN.com)