Eddie Redmayne as a transgender pioneer: another Oscar lock?

Could Eddie Redmayne be gearing up for his next Oscar win already?

On the heels of Eddie Redmayne's Oscar win for best actor, the first pictures have been released of Redmayne as a transgender pioneer in The Danish Girl.

After portraying Stephen Hawking in the biopic The Theory of Everything, Redmayne will star in Tom Hooper's adaptation of the novel David Ebershoff as Danish artist Einar Wegener, who became Lili Elbe.

Wegener, who was born in 1882, was the first person to successfully undergo gender-reassignment surgery, which took place in Germany.

Redmayne spoke to media about the controversial issue of casting a cisgender person in a transgender role.

He acknowledged the history of cisgender actors taking the roles of transgender people.

"One of the complications is that nowadays you have hormones, and many trans women have taken hormones," he stated. "But to start this part playing male you’d have to come off the hormones, so that has been a discussion as well. Because back in that period there weren’t hormones."

LGBT roles have proven to be Oscar bait, and actors who have garnered either Academy Award nominations or awards for portraying transgender characters include Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry, Felicity Huffman in Transamerica, and Jared Leto in The Dallas Buyers' Club. 

The film is slated for a 2016 release.