Charlize Theron is to lead the cast of a new comic book movie.

Charlize Theron

Charlize Theron

The 'Mad Max: Fury Road' actress is to star in the film adaptation of 'The Old Guard', a five-issue comic book series about immortal warriors, in which she will play the 5,000-year-old Andronika the Scythian, who is known as Andy, the Daily Mail newspaper reports.

Andy is the leader of the warriors, an Amazon from the Herodotus age of ancient Greece and has no idea why she's still alive.

Starring alongside Charlize as another immortal warrior will be 'If Beale Street Could Talk' actress KiKi Layne, who will portray newest recruit Nile, a US Marine. A third role will be that of a French Renaissance thief, but their casting has not been revealed yet.

'The Old Guard' comics were produced by writer Greg Rucka and illustrator Leandro Fernandez and the authors have described their work as a "fairytale of blood and bullets".

'The Secret Life of Bees' filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood will direct the movie, which is due to shoot this year in a number of locations, including Morocco and London.

Charlize recently admitted she's always convinced she'll get "fired" on every movie she works on.

She said: "I still have this every single time I start a job, 'I'm gonna get fired. They're gonna find out I'm a terrible actor. This is gonna be the one. This is gonna be the job where they all find out I'm just a total lie.'"

And the 43-year-old star previously urged women not to be so "polite" when asking for equal pay.

She said: "I am in a position where I could put my foot down and say, I want equal pay to my male co-star, who I had billed another movie with. We were doing a sequel, we had done it together, why not? What was interesting about it was I had a studio that said all right. And I was like, oh? We just need to say this? We just need to not be so polite about it and say what we want? ... The amount of traction and the amount of women who are being empowered by other women to step forward and actually speak their truth, I know in my life I've never seen anything like that. This is a rock rolling down a mountain really fast, and I'm quite enjoying watching it."