Marvel Studios has made its first official casting announcement for Joss Whedon’s Avengers: Age of Ultron and it’s a major one--Emmy Award-winning actor James Spader (Boston Legal, The Practice) will play Ultron the primary villain in Avengers: Age of Ultron, the highly anticipated sequel to director Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, which earned over $1.5 billion in theaters in 2012.
 
Spader, who has acted in many films including Steven Spielberg’s highly acclaimed Lincoln where he played William N. Bilbo, who played a key role in lobbying for the passage of the 13th Amendment, which banned slavery.  The busy actor has also not forsaken the small screen, Spader is playing a key villain in the new NBC series, The Blacklist.
 
Whedon contends that the Ultron who appears in his Avengers sequel will differ considerably the Ultron character who appears in the comics (see "Whedon Says Movie Ultron Will Differ From the Comics").