Now that House has wrapped an eight-season run (that I never bothered to actually check out), Hugh Laurie can return to live-action filmmaking — a realm he saw very little of during his doctor days. And the actor’s doing it in a big, lucrative way, since Variety has pegged him as the primary antagonist of José Padilha‘s RoboCop.

The specifics pertaining to this character are, unsurprisingly, hard to truly come by, but Variety says he’ll be appearing as “the cold, sarcastic CEO of Omni Corp.,” the group behind RoboCop’s creation. Does that mean he’s replacing the sort of character Kurtwood Smith played the first time out? Fine by me, because that’s a pair of shoes I wouldn’t want to fill.

Besides the fact that “cold and sarcastic” is just the sort of demeanor Laurie played up and made himself a household name off of, it’s also the next solid addition to a shockingly good cast. As of now, Joel Kinnaman is appearing as the titular, heroic fighter; Gary Oldman will play his creator; Samuel L. Jackson was cast as a TV personality; and Abbie Cornish has an undisclosed female lead part. Whether or not one wants this to happen — I’ll bet that, even now, most are in the latter camp — you can’t deny the strength of this lineup. I, having no real objection to such a remake, am just genuinely interested in seeing them work together; the robot-inflicted violence is a nice topping.

Does Laurie give you any hope or interest in RoboCop?