Jessica Chastain may play villain in 'X-Men: Dark Phoenix'

June 15 (UPI) -- Hollywood star Jessica Chastain may play a villain in X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

The 40-year-old actress is in talks to portray the alien empress Lilandra in the forthcoming movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Chastain would star alongside Game of Thrones actress Sophie Turner. Turner will portray Jean Grey, also known as Phoenix, who possesses telepathic and telekinetic abilities. The character struggled to control her powers after being imbued with the Phoenix Force.

Dark Phoenix aims to retell Chris Claremont's Dark Phoenix storyline from the X-Men comics, which was previously adapted in the 2006 film X-Men: The Last Stand. The Last Stand writer Simon Kinberg will direct the new movie.

"We ended up adding the cure plot into it so there were larger stakes and it included more of the X-Men. The Dark Phoenix story went from being the A-plot to the B-plot of the movie," Kinberg said of The Last Stand in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2015.

"What's nice now is my hope is eventually we can tell that story again," he teased.

X-Men stars Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy and Nicholas Hoult will return for Dark Phoenix, according to Variety. The film is prepping to shoot in Montreal, and will open in theaters Nov. 2, 2018.

Chastain is known for her work in Zero Dark Thirty, Interstellar and The Martian. She is slated to appear in a number of other films, including Molly's Game with Idris Elba and Woman Walks Ahead with Sam Rockwell.