Jessica Chastain to star in Native American drama as Sitting Bull confidant (Exclusive)

Jessica Chastain is in talks to star in the period drama Woman Walks Ahead.

Steven Knight, who created Peaky Blinders and penned the Tom Hardy drama Locke, will write the script while Nanny McPhee Returns helmer Susanna White will direct.

Chastain would play Caroline Weldon, a 19th-century Brooklyn artist and activist who moved to the Standing Rock Reservation in Dakota Territory to help Sioux chieftain Sitting Bull fight to keep the land for his people. She would write letters to the federal government on behalf of Sitting Bull and eventually lived on the land with her teenage son for several years, even though she was vilified by the press, which called her "Sitting Bull's white squaw."

Ed Zwick will produce the film. IM Global is selling the film, and will introduce it to buyers at EFM in Berlin.

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The move brings back to the life the project that has been around for at least a decade and at one point had Tom Vaughan (Starter for 10) attached to direct.

Chastain was most recently seen in The Martian and Crimson Peak. Her upcoming films include The Zookeeper's Wife and The Huntsman Winter's War. She's also attached to Miss Sloane and The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. She's repped by CAA, Mosaic and Hansen, Jacobson.

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White most recently directed the film Our Kind of Traitor, which stars Damien Lewis and Ewan McGregor. She's also helmed episodes of Parade's End, Masters of Sex and Billions. She's repped by United Agents.

Knight was nominated for an Oscar for writing 2002's Dirty Pretty Things and wrote Robert Zemeckis' latest project, an untitled World War Two thriller to star Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. He's repped by CAA, United Agents and Nelson Davis.

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