By James White | Posted 25 May 2017

A huge fan of comic books in real life, Rosario Dawson has spent the last few years as the main crossover character and wryly quipping heart and soul of the Marvel/Netflix Defenders series, Claire Temple. She's extending her reach into another corner of the superhero world, entering talks to join The New Mutants.

The X-Men spin-off film has Josh Boone gearing up to shoot the story of younger mutants who end up forming a new team. Anya Taylor-Joy and Maisie Williams are already aboard to star and the cast is slowly being built. If she signs on, Dawson will play Dr. Ceilia Reyes, a mutant and medical doctor who acts as a mentor for the teens and who can also generate a protective bio-field around herself.

Boone wrote the script with Kante Gwaltney, and he's got plans to make this a very different sort of mutant movie. "We are making a full-fledged horror movie set within the X-Men universe," he tells Entertainment Weekly. "There are no costumes. There are no supervillains. We’re trying to do something very, very different." He's taking inspiration from artist Bill Sienkiewicz' 1980s run on the comics, with darker and surrealistic influences. For more from Boone, head to EW's site.

New Mutants should kick off filming in July ready for an April 2018 release, while Dawson will be back on Marvel duty for The Defenders, due on Netflix on 18 August. And she's not just a Marvel hero, as she voiced Batgirl in this year's The Lego Batman Movie.

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