Leonard Nimoy, best known for playing Spock in Star Trek, will provide the voice for Sentinel Prime in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. According to EW, who broke the news, this will be Nimoy’s second time at voicing a robot as he was the voice of Galvatron in 1986′s The Transformers: The Movie.

Sentinel Prime is the predecessor of Optimus Prime and we saw his wrecked body in the teaser trailer, found crash-landed on the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969. Director Michael Bay was apparently interested in having Nimoy voice a character in Revenge of the Fallen, but wasn’t sure he could pay the veteran actor enough.

“I was too scared to ask him,” the director says. “Plus, he’s married to Susan Bay, who’s a cousin of mine. So I had to be careful. I’ve met him at family functions. But he told me, ‘I would be honored. I’m glad to be back!’”

Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson and John Turturro will be back for the third outing, with Peter Cullen returning as the voice of Optimus Prime and Hugo Weaving returning as the voice of Megatron. Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley will be replacing Megan Fox as the female lead, playing Sam Witwicky’s new love interest Carly.

In this new movie, the Autobots and Decepticons become involved in a perilous space race between the U.S. and Russia, and once again human Sam Witwicky has to come to the aid of his robot friends. LaBeouf, who admitted he wasn’t impressed with the second film, said “there’s going to be a lot of death, human death. This time, they’re targeting humans,” and says “It’s going to be the craziest action movie ever made, or we failed.”

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While I wasn’t a fan of how Leonard Nimoy’s Elder Spock was introduced in J.J Abrams Star Trek (coincidentally appearing in the snow cave at the right time), I did think it was a great move adding him to the film. Although, according to Nimoy he probably won’t be back for the sequel.

From GeeksOfDoom:

Leonard Nimoy will not reprise his role as the Elder Spock in the planned sequel to the revamped Star Trek film directed by J.J Abrams, he said today at a panel discussion at Dragon*Con 2009.

“There are no plans for me to return for the second movie,” he said in response to a question asked by an attendee.

William Shatner, who has been absence from the convention scene for the past few years, joined Nimoy on stage for a discussion that began with a playful exchange about why Shatner wasn’t featured in the new movie. Shatner admitted he’s never seen the movie, but not because of any sort of grudge.

“I think the Spock character is very well established as portrayed by Zachary Quinto. And I think if you saw the movie Bill, you’d say the same of Chris Pine,” Nimoy said.

After a long pause from Shatner, he replied with the classic Shatner-esque: “…Bullshit” — causing the audience to erupt in laughter and softening the blow that Nimoy would no longer be a part of the universe he helped create.

“I ain’t seen the movie ya’ll,” Shatner quipped back in his best Southern accent.

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