Brie Larson? In Talks For ‘?Captain Marvel??’ — Director To Be Announced Soon?

Brie Larson as Captain Marvel? Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios may be interested in the Oscar-winning actress to take on the role of Carol Danvers in the character’s cinematic debut, according to Variety.

The site reports that Marvel is in negotiations with Brie Larson to play Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, which will be Marvel’s first female superhero lead in a standalone film. Sources tell the site that Larson is Marvel’s first choice, and that the Room actress has a pretty good chance of accepting the role. But Brie Larson seemingly being the front-runner for the role is a bit of a surprise, only because fans have been talking about actress Emily Blunt playing the role of Carol Danvers for the last few years.

“I think, it’s always for me, it’s always about — and now, more so — what am I putting out there?,” Blunt herself told ScreenCrush just two years ago. “What would be interesting for me and what would be interesting for people to see. So, if it’s an awesome part, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Marvel movie or a tiny movie, I’d be up for it.”

At the time, Emily didn’t know anything about the character, and claimed that no one at Marvel had called her or her people in regards to the role. This didn’t stop fans from widely speculating that the actress would eventually land the role. But this new potential casting news comes almost four months after Brie Larson earned her first Academy Award for her role in Room.

But Captain Marvel doesn’t seem to currently have a director attached, either, or at least a director has not been officially announced by the studio.

“In terms of Captain Marvel, we don’t send out edicts,” Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige told Deadline earlier this May. “That being said, we are meeting with many, many immensely talented directors, the majority of whom are female. I do hope they will have announcements certainly by the summer, before the summer’s end, on a director for that.”

If this statement from Feige is true, there is still some time before a director could be officially announced, and if Brie Larson is leaning towards saying yes, we may hear official confirmation that she has signed on very soon. In May, it was rumored that indie director Elizabeth Wood (White Girl) met with Marvel representatives about possibly directing Captain Marvel. The hunt for fresh, new talent with indie directors is a strategy that makes sense and is in-line with a lot of their more recent hiring decisions. Wood’s film, White Girl, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in February and received a Grand Jury Prize nomination as well as a distribution deal with Netflix.

More recently, names like Jennifer Kent and Niki Caro have been mentioned by the Hollywood Reporter as possible choices to direct the female-centric superhero film. Kent is an actress and filmmaker who directed the 2014 horror film The Babadook, and is currently in production on her next film, The Nightingale, while Caro is a screenwriter and director (Whale Rider, McFarland, USA).

Brie Larson has her sights on another marvelous role https://t.co/wEw5bXxZkT pic.twitter.com/nwpoWWNBM2

— Variety (@Variety) June 2, 2016

Brie Larson has been excelling with her work in indie dramas recently, but that hasn’t stopped her from signing onto more high-concept, big-budget projects like Kong: Skull Island, which she just wrapped on. After winning an Oscar, taking on a superhero project like Captain Marvel — with a studio track record like the one Marvel has — could catapult her to superstardom.

Captain Marvel currently has a release date set for March 8, 2019, with a screenplay by Guardians of the Galaxy co-writer Nicole Perlman as well as Inside Out co-writer Meg LeFauve.

[Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images]