'Prometheus' Star Guy Pearce Joins 'Iron Man 3'

Filming begins next month for Shane Black's Iron Man 3, and casting details for the next installent of Marvel's popular movie franchise have begun to be revealed. We know that many of the regulars have signed on to return, including Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts and Don Cheadle as Lt. Col. James 'Rhodey' Rhodes. A couple weeks back it was announced that Ben Kingsley was in final talks to play a villain role. And now we've learned that Memento/Prometheus star Guy Pearce is also in talks for the threequel.

Variety is reporting that Pearce is in final talks to play geneticist Aldrich Killian.

It has been known for months that the third film will be loosely based on Warren Ellis' six-issue Extremis that introduced nanotechnology to Stark's technologies, and a threat based within a nanotech virus. Earlier reports have claimed that Kingsley would not play the Mandarin, but a character responsible for the spread of a nanobot virus. In the comic book miniseries, Killian co-created the Extremis nano technology that Iron Man employs, a technology which has also landed in the hands of terrorists.

Here is more information about the character from marvunapp:

Through trial and error, the brilliant Maya Hansen constructed Extremis, a bio-electronics package fitted into a few billion graphic nanotubes and suspended in a carrier fluid. The package, when injected into the human genome, was meant to hack the body's repair center and rewrite the normal human blueprint with a better one. When the human brain is convinced that the Extremis blueprint is the correct one, it shuts the human down, leaving the human needing nutrients intravenously injected during the following days while the body rebuilds. Under the premise that she would use her new creation for military efforts, Maya obtained military funding for her operation.

Maya learned that the military was pulling her funding before she could try Extremis on a live subject. She and her partner at Futurepharm, Aldrich Killian, decided that they should put Extremis into the hands of criminals, then involve Tony Stark's creation, Iron Man, against the Extremis-enhanced criminal. She figured that if they could thus prove the value of Extremis, it would help her save countless human lives after her funding was restored. She and Aldrich stole Extremis and put it into the hands of terrorists.

Iron Man 3 begins shooting in North Carolina next month, and is set to hit theaters on May 3rd 2013.