Ben Whishaw In Line For Steven Spielberg's 'Robopocalypse'

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After months of silence, it's always fun to have an explosion of news on an anticipated project. We're at that point with Steven Spielberg's 2014 film Robopocalypse, written by Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) based on the Daniel H. Wilson's novel. Chris Hemsworth has been attached as the lead for several weeks and Monday Anne Hathaway was rumored to join him along with a new producer, former Fox executive Tom Rothman. Now Variety is reporting another likely addition to the cast: Ben Whishaw, who'll soon been seen in Cloud Atlas and Skyfall. He's in talks to play the hacker character named Lurker. Read more after the jump.

Variety broke the news of Whishaw's likely casting, saying that "he has been at the top of DreamWorks' list since the casting process began."

As a refresher, here's Amazon's description of the story:

Not far into our future, the dazzling technology that runs our world turns against us. Controlled by a childlike—yet massively powerful—artificial intelligence known as Archos, the global network of machines on which our world has grown dependent suddenly becomes an implacable, deadly foe. At Zero Hour—the moment the robots attack—the human race is almost annihilated, but as its scattered remnants regroup, humanity for the first time unites in a determined effort to fight back. This is the oral history of that conflict, told by an international cast of survivors who experienced this long and bloody confrontation with the machines. Brilliantly conceived and amazingly detailed, Robopocalypse is an action-packed epic with chilling implications about the real technology that surrounds us.

Spielberg is currently finishing Lincoln while simultaneously doing pre-production on this aimed at an early 2013 start date. The film was originally scheduled to hit later in the year but was eventually given a more realistic release date of April 25, 2014.

While Whishaw is a name and face film fans have recognized for sometime, 2012 will truly be his coming out party and landing a Steven Spielberg summer blockbuster is a pretty nice next step. Do you think he'll be good as the hacker Lurker?