James Spader Will Play Ultron In The Avengers Sequel, Vin Diesel Is Still Confusing

As we already knew, The Avengers: Age of Ultron will feature the robot Ultron as the main villain, or otherwise that title would have been pretty darn stupid. What we haven’t known is which super famous actor would be providing the voice of Ultron, as some people thought that Paul Bettany would continue his role as Jarvis, Iron Man’s computer voice buddy that could be manipulated into the evil Ultron, or the robotic, grumbling Vin Diesel would provide the voice, as he’d been hinting a new deal with Marvel Studios for the past two months.

It turns out that neither of those are the case. Instead, according to Movies.com, James Spader will be the voice and/or possibly the motion capture physical inspiration of Ultron. So what does that mean for Diesel and his angelic singing voice? Nothing, actually. In fact, Diesel might not even be in Guardians of the Galaxy either. It turns out that he’s been teasing us for something completely different.

What a dick.

EW caught up with Diesel (currently on a Riddick press tour), and the actor clarified that he initially met with Marvel Studios about a wholly original project. “Marvel is creating a fresh IP that they would like to partner with for a 2017 release,” he explained. But all the online rumormongering caused by Diesel’s statements on Facebook and at Comic-Con led to an entirely new collaboration. “I guess the internet went a little crazy in a great way. And Marvel Studios came back and said: ‘In spite of the fact that we’re so excited about generating a fresh IP, we have a character that could satisfy all the Marvel fans and all of your fans that want to see us collaborate on something immediately.’ And they sent over something interesting.” (Via EW)

Entertainment Weekly’s Darren Franich still seems to believe that Diesel will provide the voice of Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy, while also positing that he could be the Black Bolt in the Inhumans film scheduled for 2017. I can’t imagine, though, that Diesel and Marvel would be playing this coy about him being the voice of a tree, when Guardians is less than a year away. If that’s seriously his role, then it’s pretty stupid to keep teasing it, even if Diesel’s strange, rabid fans eat this sh*t up like it’s candy.

So which important Marvel character that could tie into the Avengers Phase 3 plan could Diesel play? It’s pretty f*cking obvious to me.

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