The fifth and final Twilight film may be scheduled to release next November, but Stephenie Meyer ain’t done with you yet. Her best-selling 2008 science-fiction novel The Host — her only non-Twilight work to date — is in the process of being turned into a film, so expect to hear plenty of news about it between now and its March 29, 2013 release date. In fact, here’s some right now: The important role of Jared Howe will be played by 26-year-old actor Max Irons, EW has learned.
Irons, son of Oscar-winning and golden-throated actor Jeremy Irons, was last seen in this year’s Red Riding Hood. For this project, he joins director Andrew Niccol (In Time, Gattaca) and the long-attached Saoirse Ronan, who will play Melanie Stryder, a young woman who shares her body with an alien force known as Wanderer. Since no Meyer novel is complete without some complicated relationship geometry, Jake Abel has been cast in the role of Ian, a man who falls in love with Wanderer despite the fact that she is in the body of Melanie who is in love with Jared. Fans of the book, may I suggest you start preparing your visual aids and PowerPoint explanations now.
The film will begin shooting in February in Louisiana and then New Mexico and will mark one of the first productions for Open Road Films, a young distribution company backed by AMC and Regal theater chains. (с)
Actor Jake Abel is frontrunner to play one of the two male lead roles in The Host, the adaptation of the science fiction novel by Twilight author Stephenie Meyer that will star Saoirse Ronan and be directed by Andrew Niccol, who wrote the sсript. Negotiations are expected to begin soon. Abel was chosen from among a group of young thesps and he is negotiating for the role of Ian. The other male lead role of Jake is down to a small circle of actors including Liam Hemsworth (also a finalist to play Bruce Willis’s son in A Good Day To Die Hard), Max Irons, Kit Harington and Jai Courtney. Abel has starred alongside Ronan in The Lovely Bones, and his other recent credits include I Am Number Four and Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Open Road acquired the film for domestic distribution. Abel’s repped by UTA and Anthem Entertainment. (с)