Skins bad-boy, Brit up-and-comer Jack O'Connell has replaced Jamie Blackley in the role of the young hero Calisto in the follow-up to Zack Snyder's hit 2006 adaptation of the Frank Miller miniseries, provisionally titled 300: Rise of an Empire.
The film will follow the series of naval engagements that took place simultaneously with the more famous Battle of Thermopylae depicted in 300 and is finally set to start shooting in Bulgaria later this month.
Calisto, a 16 year old whose desire to become the heroic soldier his father was, leads him to become the leader of a small band of soldiers; the film will also star Eva Green as Artemisia, Aussie thesp Sullivan Stapleton as Themistocles and Rodrigo Santoro, who'll reprise his role as the Persian god-king Xerxes.
Santoro confirmed the setting of director Noam Murro's film, saying the script is being completed:
I think they're calling it a spin-off because it's not exactly a prequel, it's not a sequel. It takes place in the same time, you start a little earlier but then you see that it's like a different point of view, a different camera, a different angle. While that battle was happening, the one that you saw in 300, there was another battle happening next to it and you will have a chance to see all of that happening and how they interact. I don't want to ruin it.
O'Connell recently had to drop out of a role in Beautiful Creatures, which may well have made him once again available for 300; he will next be seen this year in the Michael Morpugo adaptation Private Peaceful, and then in The Liability.
The long-gestating ‘whatsoever to 300' is set to debut on August 2nd, 2013.
