Cate Blanchett is in talks to star in 'The House With a Clock in Its Walls'.

Cate Blanchett

Cate Blanchett

The 48-year-old actress is said to be in early discussions about joining Jack Black in the forthcoming horror film, an adaptation of John Bellairs' 1973 book of the same name, according to Variety.

Eli Roth is set to direct the motion picture, which will be produced by Brad Fischer and James Vanderbilt, alongside Eric Kripke, who is writing the script.

William Sherak, Tracey Nyberg, and Laeta Kalogridis are due to executive produce the project.

The book tells the story of a 10-year-old orphan, Lewis Barnavelt, who finds a hidden world in his uncle's old house.

The abode used to be owned by a couple who practiced black magic and planned to bring the end of the world through a mysterious clock which doesn't stop ticking.

Blanchett is due to portray Marvel's first female on screen villain, Hela, in upcoming movie 'Thor: Ragnarok', and the star recently admitted she didn't even know she was the first.

She said: "I thought, 'Surely not ... well, no actually that's true.'

"There's been many, many, many [female villains] in the comic books, but they've been a little tardy in bringing them to the screen, so hopefully there will be a lot more villainesses."

But she didn't hesitate in accepting the part after discovering her character is responsible for destroying Thor's iconic hammer.

She said: "That had me at 'hello' actually. I thought that was really exciting that they were prepared to destroy Thor's power in the first few minutes. It's a nice entrance."