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Los Angeles - Lupita Nyong'o is in talks to star in the solo Black Panther movie.
The Oscar-winning actress is being eyed to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the love interest of the superhero in the blockbuster set for release in 2018.
A source told Deadline: "There has been a lot of talk about her doing it. But we don't know if she is going to do it yet."
The movie will be directed by Creed's Ryan Coogler and if Nyong'o nabs the role, she'll star opposite Chadwick Boseman, who first played the character and his alter ego T'Challa in Captain America: Civil War.
Although she is to be the film's love interest it is not yet known which Marvel Comics character she could take on but there are numerous names in the frame.
Monica Lynne is one of them, the American professional singer who met the hero when he rescued her from the racist organisation The Sons of the Serpent.
Malaika, the Wakandan trade ambassador to Paris, has also been tipped and even the X-Men character Storm, who the Black Panther married in a storyline in 2006, though it is unlikely that Marvel would be allowed to use her because the rights to the X-Men franchise are owned by 20th Century Fox.
Despite little being revealed about the plot, it is expected to expand on the storyline that was first introduced in Captain America: Civil War of how T'Challa becomes the Black Panther.
T'Challa's father T'Chaka is king of the African nation Wakanda and has the ceremonial title Black Panther as the chief of the Panther Tribe, but is murdered when a bomb goes off at the UN making his son the Black Panther.
Marvel's Kevin Feige is producing the movie.
Nyong'o can be seen next in Disney's Queen of Katwe with David Oyelowo.
