PHOTOS: Angelina Jolie's Top 10 Red Carpet Looks

In the original, Jolie starred as a CIA officer who discovers she is a Russian sleeper cell agent with a mission to assassinate the U.S. president. Salt grossed $293.5 million worldwide, so Columbia in 2011 hired the movie’s credited writer, Kurt Wimmer, to pen a sequel.

Earlier this year, however, reports surfaced that Jolie didn’t think his script was up to snuff and had not committed to the project, which is being produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Sunil Perkash. Johnston's hiring caps off an almost year-long search for a scribe who could reconceive the script with a take that satisfied all parties.

PHOTOS: Showbiz Kids: 17 of Hollywood's Most Famous Offspring

UTA-repped Johnston is a left-of-center choice for the project as her most notable credits are the character dramas The Prince of Tides (1991), which starred Barbra Streisand, and Seven Years in Tibet (1997), which starred Jolie’s fiance Brad Pitt.

Johnston did work on Wonder Woman as well as Brad Bird’s San Francisco Earthquake project 1906 and has the Colin Firth-Emily Blunt drama Arthur Newman awaiting release next year.

Email: Borys.Kit@thr.com

Twitter: @Borys_Kit