Tilda Swinton in talks to join Marvel's Doctor Strange

Tilda Swinton is set to join Benedict Cumberbatch in Marvel's film adaptation of its comic Doctor Strange.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Swinton, who won the best supporting Oscar in 2007 for Michael Clayton, will play the Ancient One, a Tibetan mystic who trains Cumberbatch's titular Doctor to be the next sorceror supreme.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is also rumoured to be cast, in an as-yet unknown role.

The Ancient One is male in the comics, but Marvel appears to have decided on a gender switch.

Fans have welcomed this move, given the ongoing controversy surrounding the studio's attitudes to its female characters and female audience, however concerns have been raised over casting a British actress as a Tibetan character.

Swinton has garnered a cult following and has been a muse for fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld and walked the runway for the fashion house Viktor & Rolf.

Her ethereal appearance has seen her cast as witch (the Narnia series), gender-swapping time traveller (Orlando, adapted from Virginia Woolf's novel) and vampire (opposite Tom Hiddleston in Only Lovers Left Alive), while last year she was aged several decades for a cameo role in Wes Anderson's multiple Oscar-winner, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Swinton will next be seen in Amy Schumer's comedy Trainwreck and has finished filming the Coen brothers' film Hail, Caesar!