Three actresses compete to star with Tom Cruise's Jack Reacher

UPDATE: Rosamund Pike will star opposite Tom Cruise in One Shot .

The Brit actress screentested with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie at the weekend and won the role, according to an update from The Hollywood Reporter .

It will be her highest profile role for some time, though she'll be seen in Johnny English Reborn and Clash Of The Titans 2 before the Lee Child adap is ready.

Was Pike the best pick of the bunch? Head to the comments section to offload your opinion...

Three actresses are currently reading for the female lead opposite Tom Cruise's Jack Reacher in One Sho t.

The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Hayley Atwell, Alexa Davalos and Rosamund Pike are in contention for the role, which is said to be a tough female lawyer.

Atwell proved a likeably no-nonsense foil to Chris Evans' Captain America in this summer's superhero period piece, and given Cappy's fate, it looks unlikely she'll be recruited for The Avengers .

She also appeared in The Duchess and Brideshead Revisited , so she hasn't yet had a mainstream role in a modern-day setting.

Alexa Davalos may not be a recognisable name, but she has a solid list of credits to her name including Clash Of The Titans , Defiance and The Mist . We'll just skip over The Chronicles Of Riddick ...

Pike is possibly the most experienced of the bunch, but despite getting an early breakout in Die Another Day , she's never hit the A-list. That said, she has delivered some impressive supporting turns ( An Education , Barney's Version ) amid some more generic fare ( Doom , Fracture ).

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Brit Marling ( Another Earth ) was also on the list, but she bowed out early due to scheduling conflicts. The studio are said to be after a not-yet-A-list actress for the role.

There was significant uproar when Cruise nabbed the role of Reacher, the six-foot-something, taciturn badass who's the lead character in Lee Child's series of novels.

Cruise's casting has certainly increased the intrigue factor of One Shot , as all eyes will be on the grinning megastar to see if he can pull off a major image reinvention.

Christopher McQuarrie is writing and directing the adaptation, which is set to shoot this autumn.

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.