The well-received performance by John Hawkes in Sundance’s audience award-winner, The Surrogate, has helped to land the star a role in Switch, the Jackie Brown prequel. Starring opposite Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), the duo will portray younger versions of Louis Gara and Ordell Robbie. The same characters were respectively played by Robert De Niro and Samuel L. Jackson in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 film, Jackie Brown. From writer/director Dan Schechter (Goodbye Baby), Switch is an adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel, “The Switch,” which is scheduled to start production in May. Hit the jump for more.Variety reported on switch-jackie-brown-prequel-john-hawkesHawkes joining Switch, a story set 15 years before Jackie Brown. Gara and Robbie are two career criminals in Detroit who team up to kidnap the wife of a corrupt real estate developer. When their ransom demands backfire and the jilted housewife demands their assistance in seeking revenge, the two criminals must rethink their plan.Schechter apparently went out on his own to adapt Leonard’s novel, sending an unrequested screenplay to Michael Siegel, the author’s representative. Luckily for Schechter, the Siegel and Leonard approved of the young filmmaker’s treatment and granted the rights to make the movie (and came on board as producers for good measure).Aside from the Sundance favorite, The Surrogate, (which you can read Matt’s review of here), Hawkes has been in a number of note-worthy projects as of late, including the Oscar-nomination earning turn in Winter’s Bone, opposite Jennifer Lawrence; an appearance in Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion and Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene. Hawkes has recently wrapped production on Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.