**Update: **Deadline reports that Kinnaman is now confirmed for the role. Even as we write this, MGM is paying a group of criminals to blast him to pieces, whereupon their best scientists will merge his head with a robot body (they're going to lose the arm) to become the future of law enforcement...
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While he burst on to the international scene playing a man caught up in crime in Daniel Espinosa’s Snabba Cash, Joel Kinnaman has been spending a lot of his time acting as a police detective in the US telly remake of The Killing. Now all that law enforcement experience might come in handy, because MGM has offered him the lead in the Robocop reboot.
Elite Squad director Jose Padilha is aboard to call the shots and he’s been flipping through the usual go-to list looking for the right star to fill Alex Murphy’s metal helmet. There were brief, unsubstantiated rumours floating around about Russell Crowe, and Michael Fassbender was said to be in the running.
But now Kinnaman, who last cropped up in Espinosa’s English language debut thriller Safe House alongside Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington, looks to be the man. Word-wise, while Padilha has worked on the script with Josh Zetumer, the most recent word had Gran Torino’s Nick Schenk taking a crack at the latest draft.
If he does lock in the part and start to preserve the public trust, we hope Kinnaman knows what he’s in for. A quick phone call to original Robo Peter Weller might be in order so he can be fully aware of the weight of the part. And we don’t just mean fan expectations…