Natalie Portman Updates on CLOUD ATLAS; Confirms She Won't Star in Any Upcoming Comic Adapted Films

Academy Award frontrunner Natalie Portman, fresh off her groundbreaking performance in Black Swan has an update as to who will direct the epic Cloud Atlas and confirms she is done with comic book adapted films for the near future.

Portman has confirmed that the Wachowskis (The Matrix Trilogy) will co-direct the upcoming Cloud Atlas alongside Tom Tykwer (Perfume, The International). The novel Cloud Atlas is a sweeping tale that takes place over thousands of years, features six lead characters and has many different genres amidst a complicated storyline. Other stars attached to the major project include Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, James McAvoy, and Ian McKellan.

"I don’t know what’s going on with financing. I read it while doing V for Vendetta and I gave it to the Wachowskis and to Tom Tykwer. Now they’re directing it together, the three of them. I will have some acting role in it if it happens, but probably nothing major," said Portman.

The Wachowskis are currently filming their gay Iraq love story Cobalt Neutral 9 and have expressed interest in doing an updated take on the Robin Hood mythos with Will Smith in the lead role. No word yet on when work will commence on Cloud Atlas but Berry mentioned a 2011 summer date, which may seem like a hard target to hit on such an ambitious sounding project.

Portman also denied any involvement in Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises and Zack Snyder‘s Superman: Man of Steel. So it appears her supporting role in the upcoming Thor will be it for comic book related films in the near future.

The synopsis for Cloud Atlas is as follows:

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation — the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.