**Update: **Deadline is now reporting that Jamie Campbell Bower, currently to be found playing a young King Arthur in US cable series Camelot, has won the job of Jace.
Now that the casting frenzy over **The Hunger Games **is reaching an end, we can all relax and not worry about another big book-based franchise trawling its nets through the world, looking to scoop up good-looking young ac... Oh, no, sorry... There’s still The Mortal Instruments, which is searching for someone to play opposite leading lady Lily Collins. And three possible names up for the job? Jamie Campbell Bower, Ed Speleers and Leebo Freeman.
According to The Wrap, the three have all been spotting leaving screen tests for the film, which has been adapted from Cassandra Clare’s novel series.
Collins will play Clary Fray, whose mother is attacked and abducted from her New York home by an odd creature. When Fray goes to find out what happen, she discovers that she’s one of the few people who can perceive what most humans can’t. So begins an adventure for her, in which she meets the warrior Jace, a demon-dispatching hunk.
Bower is the most genre-experienced of the trio, having cropped up in both the **Twilight **films and Harry Potter. Speleers got his start in Eragon, which didn’t exactly enjoy the same level of success. He’s since been in a few smaller movies. And the oddly named Leebo Freeman, who sounds like he should have been one of the bounty hunters Darth Vader hires in The Empire Strikes Back? He’s an almost total newcomer, with only one short sitting on his IMDB page.
It’s still early days for the **Instruments **pic, which has Priest’s Scott Stewart directing, but it’s gearing up to shoot later this year. We’ll find out soon enough which - if any - of these three will be on screen as Jace.