Natalie Portman in Talks for Alex Garland's EX MACHINA Followup

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oscar winner Natalie Portman is currently in talks to star in Alex Garland's EX MACHINA followup - another sci-fi flick, titled ANNIHILATION.

Garland also wrote the script for the film, which is based upon Jeff VanderMeer's novel.

Per the report:

"The story sees a biologist, to be played by Portman, take part of a four-person expedition into Area X, a territory cutoff from civilization. While there, she must deal with a mysterious contamination, disappearing colleagues, a deadly animal and a being known as the Crawler, all while searching for clues regarding her husband's disappearance."

Portman's other upcoming big screen projects include Jane Got a Gun, A Tale of Love and Darkness and Knight of Cups. She recently appeared in The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, Thor: The Dark World and more.

A surprise hit, EX MACHINA follows Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), a programmer at an internet-search giant, wins a competition to spend a week at the private mountain estate of the company's brilliant and reclusive CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac). Upon his arrival, Caleb learns that Nathan has chosen him to be the human component in a Turing Test - charging him with evaluating the capabilities, and ultimately the consciousness, of Nathan's latest experiment in artificial intelligence.

That experiment is Ava (Alicia Vikander), a breathtaking A.I. whose emotional intelligence proves more sophisticated--and more deceptive--than the two men could have imagined.

Written and directed by Garland, EX MACHINA is produced by Scott Rudin and Andrew Macdonald.

Photo Credit: RD / Orchon / Retna Digital

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