Hugh Laurie is in talks to star in Disney's 'Tomorrowland'.

The 'House' actor has entered negotiations to play George Clooney's villainous counterpart in Brad Bird's mysterious sci-fi film, which was previously known as '1952'.

The ''ultra secret'' project was originally thought to be an alien invasion movie similar to Steven Spielberg's cult 1978 sci-fi film 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', but writer Damon Lindelof has since laid rest to the rumours.

He tweeted: ''We won't tell you what it's about (yet), but we will tell you what it's NOT about. And that would be ALIENS. #Tomorrowland (sic)''.

Damon posted a picture of a box of Walt Disney's personal archive labelled '1952' on his Twitter account last month, alongside the caption: ''The Box... opened''.

The mysterious box contained old photographs of Walt, Technicolour film, a history of NASA called 'Model Research', an August 1928 edition of Amazing Stories magazine, and a vinyl record.

This sparked rumours the film was in fact based on the Tomorrowland section of the Magic Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World Florida - a Jules Verne-inspired vision of a future that never came to fruition.