Australian actor Jason Clarke is the first actor to officially sign on for Kathryn Bigelow’s follow-up to 2009′s Oscar-winning “The Hurt Locker”, an untitled film about Navy SEALs involved in the killing of Osama Bin Laden, according to Deadline. This is curious, though, because we’ve thought all these months that Clarke’s “Great Gatsby” co-star Joel Edgerton had been set for the lead. It appears Edgerton is now out, perhaps a consequence of his increasingly busy shooting schedule, and Clarke is in. Others who are being eyed for supporting roles include Tom Hardy, Rooney Mara, Guy Pearce, Jennifer Ehle, Idris Elba and Nina Arianda.

The film is currently untitled but had been known under the working title of “Kill Bin Laden.” Clarke will play the leader of a special operatives group on the self-explanatory mission. Though the initial idea was to chronicle a real-life 2001 mission to kill the now-deceased Al-Qaeda leader that ultimately failed, the film will now include the actual killing of Bin Laden following his fate in real life. It’s curious to see so many actresses being eyed for roles, as the actual Navy SEALs themselves will surely be comprised of all guys. Could such talented actresses – who seem to number the men just about equally – be relegated to love interest/worried wife status? Perhaps in a lesser director’s hands, we need to be more worried.

Clarke appears to have a bit of a breakout moment on the horizon as he appears in John Hillcoat’s “The Wettest County in the World”, Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” and now Bigelow’s film. Mara is about to hit superstardom when David Fincher’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” releases next month and she’s already working on her next project, Terrence Malick’s “Lawless” opposite Ryan Gosling. Hardy broke out in Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” and is reuniting with the director on “The Dark Knight Rises.” He’s also somewhat of an Oscar dark horse for his performance in MMA family drama “Warrior.”