Oscar-nominee Jessica Chastain has entered talks to play the villainous Shi’ar empress in the X-Men movies would be "going cosmic", following the conclusion of the X-Men: First Class trilogy.
Simon Kinberg, who wrote the second and third installments in the First Class trilogy (X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse, respectively) is going to be both Sophie Turner's Jean Grey - who was introduced in the 1980s-set Apocalypse - will fully embrace her Phoenix side, as the movie's title indicates.
According to THR, Chastain - should she close her deal to the Dark Phoenix cast - will be playing Princess-Majestrix Lilandra Neramani in the X-Men cinematic universe. For those unfamiliar, the character is the empress of the Shi'ar alien empire and will be on a mission to imprison (and destroy) Grey as the ultra-powerful Dark Phoenix, in Kinberg's film adaptation of the original comic book storyline.
This report appears to confirm our previous speculation that Chastain's Poison Ivy/Gotham City Sirens comments). That is, so long as the comic book character in question was both well-developed and compelling.
Lilandra seems to fit that bill on paper; the character may be the "villain" of Dark Phoenix, but X-Men comic book readers (and/or those who care to recall X-Men: The Last Stand's adaptation of the Phoenix comic book story) know all too well how destructive Jean Grey/Phoenix can be. Hence, "antagonist" may be the more apt description for Lilandra, given that she's not wrong about the danger posed by Phoenix - not only to the Earth, but to the entire universe. That layer of moral ambiguity will hopefully help Dark Phoenix's version of the character to be a more fully-developed threat than some of the past X-Men film villains have been (see, for example, Oscar Isaac's En Sabah Nur from Apocalypse).
MORE: Can X-Men: Dark Phoenix Finally Do the Comics Justice?
Source: THR
