Fox's thriller Red Sparrow gets a new teaser poster spotlighting Jennifer Lawrence as a deadly Russian spy. Red Sparrow reunites Lawrence with her Hunger Games: Mockingjay director Francis Lawrence. The film also stars Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Mary-Louise Parker, Ciaran Hinds, Charlotte Rampling and Jeremy Irons. The first trailer for Red Sparrow dropped back in September. The film at one time had Rooney Mara and David Fincher attached. Lawrence's mother! director Darren Aronofsky also at one time circled the project.

Based on Jason Matthews' novel, Red Sparrow tells the story of Dominika Egorova, a ballerina who becomes a Russian agent. Lawrence plays Egorova, who finds herself destitute after an injury ends her ballet career. A secretive Russian intelligence agency exploits Dominika's dire situation, pressing her into service. Brutal training subsequently shapes Dominika into the most dangerous operative the service has ever produced. But when Dominika takes the field as a double agent, soon hooking up with an American CIA mole (Edgerton), she comes to question everything she's become.

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A new teaser poster revealed first by IGN goes very literal with the Red Sparrow title. The striking art features Lawrence's lead character, awash in red, with the title standing out in stark white text. See the poster below.

Update: The official Twitter account for Red Sparrow also released the poster, and revealed the new trailer for the film will arrive Monday, January 8.

Speaking to IGN, director Francis Lawrence talked about making a spy thriller that focuses on character rather than plot:

"One of the things that drew me into the story, is that it really is a personal story for a character, which I think is pretty rare in terms of the spy genre. They tend to be much more political. Or tend to be much more, kind of, plot-driven, and less personal and personal dilemma driven. And it’s one of the things that drew me in, I’m very drawn to kind of stories about sort of isolated, lonely characters trying to survive. And that’s what this story is."

In Red Sparrow, Jennifer Lawrence plays a character who begins in desperate circumstances. Powerful people recruit her and force her to undergo rigorous training. Then she finds herself in a life-threatening situation where she must call upon all she has learned. Gradually, she comes to question the very nature of what her handlers have taught her about the world. That brief description as it happens could also easily apply to Hunger Games, the franchise that made Lawrence a star. Audiences responded to Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games because she was a plucky survivor who ultimately became a hero in a larger sense. It sounds like Lawrence the actress and Lawrence the director are trying to re-capture that magic with Red Sparrow.

Based on the trailer at least, Red Sparrow shares a lot in common with recent stylish action movies like Atomic Blonde. We'll see if Lawrence thrives playing a seductive spy as well as she did playing a dystopian heroine in Hunger Games. If Red Sparrow proves a hit, perhaps Lawrence can sneak into that female James Bond conversation. Though no doubt many Bond purists would throw a fit at the idea of Jennifer Lawrence as Jane Bond, 007.

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Source: IGN

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