He may not have scored an Oscar nomination for his work in Zero Dark Thirty, but between that and Lawless, Jason Clarke certainly helped his career last year. You can tell from the many jobs he’s now either taken or is mulling, including a high-profile part in Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, and the role he’s just locked in, the lead in Stephen Gaghan’s long gestating Candy Store.
A new script written by Gaghan that he aims to direct, Candy Store follows a highly trained deep-cover operative who decides to swap the high-stakes world for a more normal existence as a Brooklyn beat cop.
But even when he does, he discovers the global criminal organisation he’d been infiltrating is operating in his new backyard. So of course he starts taking the fight to them.
Gaghan has been trying to get the project off the ground for a while now, with the likes of Brad Pitt,Denzel Washington, Christoph Waltz. Chris Hemsworth, Matt Damon and Christian Bale all reading the script. No one has yet committed, so it appears that Clarke will be the first actor to officially jump aboard. Hopefully this now means that Gaghan – who has been filling his time and keeping his mortgage paid by doing script work for other people – will now be able to start work on the Store.
Clarke will next be seen in **White House Down **and he’s worked on indie drama The Green Blade Rises, playing Abraham Lincoln’s father.