Kelsey Grammer Villain 'Transformers 4': 'Boss' Actor Cast in Summer Action Movie with Mark Wahlberg, Release Date July 27, 2014

Kelsey Grammer has just signed on to play the human villain in Michael Bay's robot action film, Transformers 4. The 58-year-old actor will play Harold Attinger, an evil counter intelligence agent. Also starring in the film is Mark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci. This sequel apparently stays true to the original three films, but with an entirely different cast.

Director Michael Bay had this to say about all of the casting choices for the next Transformers chapter:

"We're going to start off smaller. There's a brand new cast. To freshen the franchise we've redesigned everything from top to bottom. The history of the first three movies is still there, we start four years later and there's a reason why we're meeting a new cast."

The film is set to begin production in July of this year with a release date a year later on July 27, 2014.

An interesting factor about this movie is that some scenes will be shot in China. Also, Michael Bay is holding a reality show competition for Chinese citizens to win a speaking part in the movie. The show, which started casting today, expects up to 80,000 citizens to try out for the chance at a speaking role. At the end of the competition, four winners will get to say lines.

Here is a description of the contest thanks to The Hollywood Reporter:

Here is how the contest is expected to work: The online applications from those who want the roles (who must  speak some English) will be screened by the Chinese. Those who qualify will be assigned a Chinese language web page  which will feature their photo, bio and a brief audition.

Voting will be online. The first round will pare the number of contestants down to 400. In the second round, semi-finalists will face additional auditions and testing. There will then be another round of online voting through Chinese social networks to get down to a small but as yet undetermined number of finalists who will face the judges.