You’ve seen him play tag-team partner to Batman and Harry Potter, now Gary Oldman will help RoboCop kick ass in Old Detroit.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oldman has joined the cast of Jose Padilha‘s RoboCop remake, which stars Joel Kinnaman (The Killing) as Officer Alex J. Murphy, a man resurrected and reborn as a cyborg police officer.

THR says that Oldman will play Norton, “the scientist who creates RoboCop and finds himself torn between the ideals of the machine trying to rediscover its humanity and the callous needs of a corporation.”

In my recent feature RoboCop: Electric Dreams and Cybernetic Wishes, I referenced an April report from The Tracking Board that first mentioned the character of Norton. At the time, Edward Norton was in talks for the role.

I also pointed out that Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) was the executive in charge of the RoboCop program in Verhoeven’s 1987 film and that there might be some confusion between Morton and the Norton character. Well, it looks like this isn’t just an arbitrary name change and Oldman’s character will be unique to the remake.

While I would assume there will be plenty of sleazy executives calling the shots, Oldman’s character sounds like a sympathetic middle man, someone to fight for Murphy’s humanity as Omni Consumer Products attempts to strip it away.

While no start date has been set, the production is looking to shoot in Toronto and has a tentative release date of summer 2013.

After recent news about cyborg baddie Coldblood appearing in Iron Man 3, the (re)makers of RoboCop better hope they can get their film in theaters first. I can hear the the 12-year-old kids in Avengers t-shirts now: “What a rip-off! RoboCop was JUST LIKE Iron Man!”

[Source: THR]