It is admittedly difficult negotiating the transition from being a teen hunk to a fully fledged mainstream appeal movie star, but boy is Zac Efron making it look laboured. It’s not the roles he’s taking that’s the problem, just that every choice seems to be a very deliberate attempt to inch him away from his High School Musical roots, where the image it gives of him as a grown up actor is as important as the film.
Now he’s got a new film in the works, although as yet it hasn’t got a name. However, the fact its being referred to as ‘untitled workplace comedy’, is enough to tell us that here Zac’s trying to suggest he’s old enough to have a proper job! Unfortunately though, that’s all the info we get and no plot detail have been released. That said, we do know it’s being written by Jason Filardi, who also scripted Efron’s 17 Again.
This new film is just one of a slew of projects Zac is developing through his brand new production company, Ninjas Runnin’ Wild, which he recently set up through a deal at Warner. Other films in development include Art Of The Steal, which is based on a true story about a master thief, as well as an adaptation of the graphic novel Fire about a college student recruited into a secret CIA training programme, a remake of the Swedish thriller Snabba Cash, and a flick called Einstein Theory. It’s unlikely Efron will have time to make them all, but he’s certainly keeping his options open.