In a pretty nifty casting coup, James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel has just added an Oscar winner in a villainous role.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jennifer Connelly (who won an Oscar for her performance in A Beautiful Mind, but to us she'll always be the girl from Labyrinth and Betty Ross in Ang Lee's Hulk) has come aboard the live-action adaptation of Yukito Kishiro's hugely popular Japanese cyberpunk manga series, Battle Angel Alita.

Directed by Sin City's Robert Rodriguez from a screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island) and James Cameron, Alita: Battle Angel stars Rosa Salazar (Maze Runner: The Scorch Trial) in the titular role of Alita, an amnesiac female cyborg bounty hunter. The sci-fi film is currently filming in Texas and also stars Christoph Waltz as Dr. Dyson Ido, Mahershala Ali as Vector and Ed Skrein as Zapan.

Although Connelly's role is being kept under wraps, she's apparently set to play one of the movie's villains. You know who else is playing a baddie? Jackie Earle Haley, who will play "a monstrous cyborg" that will call for "plenty of CG and green screen." The last movie Connelly and Haley appeared in together, Little Children (in which Connelly played the wife of Haley's Watchmen co-star, Patrick Wilson), did not feature a monstrous cyborg ... or much CG or green screen, at that (if any at all).

Set in the 26th century, Alita tells of a female cyborg that's discovered in a scrapyard by a scientist. With no memory of her previous life except her deadly martial-arts training, the woman becomes a bounty hunter, tracking down criminals. The action-adventure story is meant to serve as a backdrop to themes of self-discovery and the search for love.

Alita: Battle Angel will hit theaters on July 20, 2018.

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(via THR)