Will Kelsey Grammer play the villain in 'Transformers 4'?

Transformers: Dark of the Moon used the real-life historical moment of the Apollo 11 moon landing to tie it into the events surrounding the Cybertronian aliens making their way to Earth. In next summer’s Transformers 4, Michael Bay intends to continue the story in a world where now the world knows of the Autobots and Decepticons.

The new cast taking over the series includes Mark Wahlberg, Jack Reynor and Nicola Peltz as its three leads along with Stanley Tucci in an unspecified role. We can now add Kelsey Grammer to the list.

Deadline has the scoop which indicates that Grammer, most well-known for his long-time role as Frasier Crane in Cheers and his own self-titled series Frasier, will be playing the human antagonist of Transformers 4. His character’s name is Harold Attinger and he’s described as a “counter-intelligence” agent.

Transformers 4 takes place four years after the events that shocked the world in Dark of the Moon. There’s no hiding the existence of sentient life on other planets or the fact that Transformers are present on Earth. The film is not a reboot as it continues from where the trilogy left off, but it does feature a new cast along with new designs for all of the robots. Bay:

“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.”

A leaked synopsis – which Paramount Pictures claimed was unofficial but asked us to take down anyway – indicated that the film’s plot would see businessmen and scientists logically trying to benefit from the alien Cybertronian incursions, attempting to learn from and adapt the technology. It also hints that there may be more events from Earth’s past (beyond Apollo 11) that the Autobots, Decepticons or some other Cybertronian faction may have been involved in, in addition to the Hoover Dam of course.

The secretive Sector 7 organization factored into the plot of the first Transformers and tied other elements of Earth’s path with alien discovers so it’s safe bet similar elements will carry over as the most fascinating parts of the films’ lore are how the writers creatively tie the events of our past to those of the fictional Transformers characters.

Sector 7 was of course shut down, but with the events of Transformer 3 - where Autobots and the military already work together – and the all-out attack on Earth, similar organizations from governments around the world will naturally be created as a response to the alien invasion. We can expect Kelsey Grammer to be involved in one such group as someone trying to benefit from the Cybertronians.

The biggest question is who the alien villains will be and just how drastic the Hasbro-focused redesigns will be. Is it time for the Dinobots?

Rob Keyes blogs at Screen Rant.