Little-Known Actor Mulls Three High-Profile Film Offers (Exclusive)

Travis Tope might be the hottest actor you’ve never heard of.

With just one film of note under his belt (The Town That Dreaded Sundown, MGM’s 2014 horror title) the 22-year-old is mulling three choice offers:

• To appear alongside Mark Wahlberg in Paramount’s remake of The Gambler, to be directed by Rupert Wyatt
• To act as one of the teen stars in Jason Reitman‘s adaptation of Chad Kultgen‘s novel Men, Women and Children
• And the lead, alongside Chloe Moretz, in November Criminals, being directed by Sacha Gervasi

Indian Paintbrush is behind the latter two projects, and insiders say schedules are expected to be worked out. It’s not clear right now whether Tope will take on The Gambler.

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Illustrating how busy he is, the Texas native was offered the chance to test for a role in Fox’s Night at the Museum 3, but he’s so inundated he needs to pass.

That’s a far cry from Tope’s status less than a year ago, when he was living in Plano, Texas, and would regularly send homemade recordings of himself to casting directors, mostly for local productions. Everything started to change when one of his recordings wound up in the hands of those casting How to Catch a Monster, Ryan Gosling‘s directorial debut. They wanted to see him.

Tope flew to L.A. in April and was among the finalists for the starring role (the part went to Iain De Caestecker). Despite being passed over for that part, 10 days later he nabbed the role in The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Buzz has been growing since production wrapped on the horror flick at the end of June.

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In The Gambler, which features Wahlberg as a UCLA English professor headed for ruin, Tope would play a student in Wahlberg’s class.

In Reitman’s ensemble about several families dealing with sexual awakening in the digital age, Tope would play the son of Adam Sandler and Rosemarie DeWitt, a high school football player addicted to internet porn.

And in Criminals, Tope would topline opposite Moretz as a teen oddball who navigates the underworld of Washington, D.C., to solve the killing of a classmate.

The talks and dealmakings are expected to firm up by the end of this week.

Tope is repped by UTA, Trevor Adley and Doug Wald at Anonymous Content, and Bloom Hergott.