Note: We're less and less sure about this news. See here for the complications, though they were originally voiced below too.

The veteran British character actor, Ian McShane, best known for his part in the Western series “Deadwood” and as Lovejoy, will voice Iorek in the upcoming The Golden Compass movie. McShane's involvement was mentioned in the Washington Post and the article's author revealed to us that the actor will be voicing the King of the Bears. Note: there's a possibility that this means Iofur but Iorek would seem the more obvious role to fill this early on; we're following this up to try to clarify it

You can view a commercial for “Deadwood” which features Ian McShane here: at about 0:36 he says “No one gets out alive.”