Hailee Steinfeld is in negotiations to star in Paramount's Transformers spinoff Bumblebee.

Travis Knight, who directed the stop-motion movie Kubo and the Two Strings, is helming the project.

Bumblebee is the yellow and black striped Autobot that appears as one of the main characters in the Transformers film series.

Plot details are being kept on the dark side of the moon but it is known that Steinfeld will play a tomboy who also holds a job as a mechanic after school. Christina Hodson (Shut In) wrote the script.

The movie project is the first spinoff in what the studio hopes will be a Transformers Cinematic Universe that will include prequels and offshoots from a line of movies that have generated over $3.7 billion worldwide with the latest one, Transformers: The Last Knight, set to hit theaters June 23.