Tatiana Maslany, Rooney Mara, and Felicity Jones Auditioning For STAR WARS Spin-Off

Just last week, writer Gary Whitta completed his draft of Godzilla director Gareth Edwards' upcoming Star Wars spin-off film and left the project to pursue other work. Now casting for the film is revving up, and THR reports that Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany and Girl With The Dragon Tattoo remake headliner Rooney Mara are auditioning for the female lead. Felicity Jones (The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Theory of Everything) is also supposedly on the studio's "want list," but there could be a scheduling conflict with Ron Howard's Da Vinci Code sequel, Inferno, which is shooting this spring and summer. The untitled Star Wars project would presumably need to get rolling about that same time, considering it already has a release date of December 16th, 2016.

The report says that Maslany is currently testing for the role, while Mara and "a handful of others" will audition this week. Both actresses would fit well in the Star Wars universe, but it's tough to speculate about who would be a better fit because story and character details are so secretive. (Jones doesn't seem like she belongs in a galaxy far, far away, but I'd love for her to surprise all of us with an amazing performance if she does get cast.) The rumor is that the plot of Edwards' spin-off film will focus on a heist to retrieve the plans for the Death Star, but that hasn't been officially confirmed by Disney/Lucasfilm.

Also worth noting: /Film reported that Simon Kinberg, who is co-writing the other Star Wars spin-off with Lawrence Kasdan (that one will be directed by Chronicle and Fantastic Four helmer Josh Trank), would take over Whitta's job writing the script as this project moves forward, but THR refutes that claim.

Sources, however, say that while Kinberg is creatively involved in Star Wars in an overall manner, there are no plans for him to take over. Kinberg is additionally crafting the X-Men universe, writing the X-Men: Apocalypse script for Fox and overseeing the upcoming Fantastic Four reshoots for which he did the rewrites.

I'm not quite sure who to believe when it comes to the script work on this one, but I guess the truth will present itself soon enough. In the meantime, let us know who you'd like to see star in this upcoming spin-off in the comments below.