Jennifer Lawrence got her pick of leading men, and now it’s Saoirse Ronan’s turn. The next highly sought after project for young actors everywhere is alien invasion actioner “The Host”, based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer (she also wrote some vampire books you may have heard of). Andrew Niccol is set to direct Ronan as Melanie Stryder, a young woman whose body is invaded by an alien “soul” named Wanderer but whose will to survive is so strong that she refuses to vacate and thus co-exists with two personalities inside one body.

There are two male leads in the film – to form that inevitable love triangle – and Variety reports eight of Hollywood’s hottest rising stars are gearing up to test opposite Ronan in the coming days. Liam Hemsworth, Kit Harington, Max Irons and Jai Courtney are testing for the role of Jared, Melanie’s boyfriend, while Dane DeHaan, Thomas McDonnell, Augustus Prew and Jake Abel are up for the role of Ian, a young man part of Melanie and Jared’s small pocket of human resistance, who falls for the alien soul residing inside of Melanie’s body.

• Liam Hemsworth is perhaps most familiar with this process after successfully beating out a number of fellow up and comers to take the role of Gale opposite Jennifer Lawrence in “The Hunger Games.” His bulk and menacing appearance certainly fits Jared’s character

• Kit Harington plays Jon Snow on HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and has been venturing into a film career lately, most recently becoming a finalist for David Dobkin’s “Arthur and Lancelot.” We are big fans of Harington but really feel he would be a more fitting Ian than Jared. His inclusion on the Jared list is curious…

• Max Irons played good-guy Henry to Shiloh Fernandez’s bad boy Peter opposite Amanda Seyfried in “Red Riding Hood” and while we thought he might end up as the big breakout actor from that film, he has been conspicuously missing from casting news since.

• Aussie Jai Courtney popped up on our radar when he landed a pivotal role in “One Shot” opposite Tom Cruise. Courtney previously starred on Starz’s “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” with late fellow countryman Andy Whitifield, who took Courtney under his wing and got him his start in the industry.

• One of our favorites, Dane DeHaan, has been landing one high profile role after another lately. After breaking out on HBO’s “In Treatment” and “True Blood”, he quickly joined the casts of “The Wettest County in the World”, “The Place Beyond the Pines” and will headline upcoming sci-fi thriller “Chronicle.”

• Thomas McDonnell played the bad boy anti-prom guy in Disney’s “Prom”, then went on and landed something much bigger, as a younger Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s vampire saga “Dark Shadows”, based on the classic soap opera.

• Someone who hasn’t been on our radar previous to now is Augustus Prew, who starred with Zach Efron in “Charlie St. Cloud” and played Prince Alfonso on Showtime series “The Borgias.” Must admit, though I was an avid fan of the show, I couldn’t tell you who Prince Alfonso was.

• Jake Abel has appeared in teen friendly action fare like “Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief” and “I Am Number Four” and has one advantage over his competitors, having already appeared onscreen with Ronan in Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones.”