Not to be outdone by recent Batfleck news Marvel Entertainment has announced that James Spader has officially signed on to play the insane robot Ultron in Joss Whedon’s Avengers 2 Age of Ultron. Spader has won Emmy’s for his television work but many fans still know him better as the man who knows how to strategically place flowers to cover the goods in Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Spader is no stranger to science fiction though having played characters in the original Stargate film and err Alien Hunter.
Somehow I doubt that Spader will jump to in motion capture suits but he is a solid actor and might be able to bring some character to a Marvel Universe villain that could easily be character lite. The original origin of Ultron is that he was built by Henry Pym (Ant-Man) and when the robot became fully self aware he focuses on becoming a father himself and destroying the human race. We’ve already heard from Whedon himself from various sources including EW that Ant-Man will not be connected to this new vision for Ultron. It’s easy to see Tony Stark being responsible for building the robot too.
There’s no word on whether Spader has signed for multiple movies and hopefully if he has Marvel will keep it under wraps. Finding out that Ultron could return after the next Avengers movie would just be too large of a spoiler.